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Summary
Summary
The Bodies Left Behind
Author Notes
Jeffery Deaver was born on May 6, 1950 in Chicago, Illinois. He received a degree in journalism from the University of Missouri and a law degree from Fordham University. Before attending law school, he worked as a business writer. After law school, he worked for a Wall Street law firm practicing corporate law. In 1990, he decided to stop practicing law and become a full-time writer.
His first novel was a horror story entitled Voodoo. He is the author of more than 25 novels and has written some of those stories under the pseudonym William Jeffries. He writes the Lincoln Rhyme series and the Kathryn Dance series. A Maiden's Grave was adapted into a film by HBO called Dead Silence and The Bone Collector was adapted into a feature film starring Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie. He received the Steel Dagger and Short Story Dagger from the British Crime Writers' Association, the Ellery Queen Reader's Award for Best Short Story of the Year three times, and the British Thumping Good Read Award.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Usually a strong plotter, bestseller Deaver (The Bone Collector) fails to deliver on the promise of this stand-alone thriller's nicely creepy opening. When two masked men break into the isolated lakeside weekend house of Steven Feldman, who works for the Milwaukee Department of Social Services, and his wife, Emma, an attorney who may have stumbled on union corruption in the course of some corporate research, Steven has just enough time to phone 911 before the intruders shoot him and Emma dead. That interrupted plea for help brings Deputy Brynn McKenzie, who possesses a set of predictable emotional baggage (an abusive ex-wife, a troubled teenage son), to the scene. A protracted and less than suspenseful game of cat-and-mouse between McKenzie and the hired guns responsible for the murders ensues. A few twists will catch some readers by surprise, but the pacing and characterizations aren't up to Deaver's best. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Deaver, who has written one excellent thriller after another, is such a good puppet master that he makes us believe whatever he wants us to believe, even things that are false, without telling us a single lie. He practices misdirection through dialogue: a character says something he believes to be true, and so we believe it, too, without questioning the assumptions on which the character is basing his statement. A perfect example of how this technique can be used to perfection occurs in Deaver's latest, in which Brynn McKenzie, a Michigan police deputy investigating a suspicious 911 emergency call, finds herself being pursued through the woods by a pair of killers. And when she meets up with a woman who is also being hunted, Brynn has two lives to protect, and precious few resources with which to do it. The novel, which in some places may remind readers of Barry England's Figures in a Landscape (1997), is vintage Deaver: tightly plotted, with plenty of right-angle plot twists and pitch-perfect dialogue. It's not until we're well more than halfway through the book that we even begin to suspect that we might have made some dangerous mistakes, accepted certain things at face value merely because the characters in the book sold them to us so successfully but by then, it's way too late, and we are completely at Deaver's mercy.--Pitt, David Copyright 2008 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
Reginald Hill, that most playful of genre authors, fancies himself a latter-day Jane Austen in THE PRICE OF BUTCHER'S MEAT (Harper, $26.95), an English mysteryof-manners set in Sandytown, a fictional resort on the Yorkshire coast, and satirizing inbred families obsessed with money and matrimony. Deploying a leisurelypaced epistolary style and a busy plot stuffed with dodgy inheritances, romantic mismatches and bountiful afternoon teas, Hill pulls off the clever literary jest of projecting Austen's unfinished novel "Sanditon" into modern times. But stretched out for more than 500 pages, the whimsy wears thin, reminding us that 19th-century novelists never had to contend with the inelegant stuttering of e-mail prose. After lying in a coma for much of "Death Comes for the Fat Man," the previous novel in this invigorating series, Detective Superintendent Andy Dalziel, head of the Mid-Yorkshire constabulary, takes his first steps back to health when he goes over the wall of a fancy convalescent home and totters into a local pub. Although he's quick to pick up on the byzantine affairs of the town's pre-eminent families, with their grandiose visions of developing Sandytown ("Home of the Healthy Holiday") into a tourist destination, Dalziel is too weak to get involved in the day-to-day skirmishes. Happily, the psychiatrist who runs the clinic asks him to keep "a sort of audio diary" on a digital recorder, which the garrulous detective names Mildred. Elsewhere in town, Charlotte Heywood, an engaging young lady of Janeite sensibilities, is busily sending saucy e-mail messages to her sister in Africa. Between Heywood and Dalziel, we get rather too much of the plot through inferior forms of communication. But once the first murder occurs, Hill gives the epistolary conceit a rest, slipping into the comfortable storytelling mode of the police procedural and broadening our view of the smoldering hostilities underneath the civilized social surface. Hill proves brilliant at recycling 19th-century characters and conventions - the gargoyle mistress of the manor, the feckless young heir, the penniless live-in relation, the family done out of its just inheritance - while gleefully adding macabre genre touches like a hog roast at which the pig is replaced by a dead body. What's this? A Jeffery Deaver novel with no mad-dog serial killer and no state-of-the-art technology to track his moves? Pinch me. But THE BODIES LEFT BEHIND (Simon & Schuster, $26.95) is no dream, only a different kind of nightmare - the elemental one of being hunted down in the wild like an animal. Brynn McKenzie, a sheriff's deputy in rugged Kennesha County, Wis., lands in this trap when she finds a high-powered lawyer and her social-worker husband shot to death in their isolated vacation house and their terrified guest, a chic city dweller named Michelle, cowering in the woods in her spike-heeled boots. Saddled with Michelle ("I'm really an actress"), Brynn is at a big disadvantage against two heavily armed hit men, hellbent on eliminating the only witness to the slaughter. Yet the resourceful deputy manages to make this a dead-even match, winning the creepy admiration of the lead killer. The meticulously structured plot moves back and forth between hunter and hunted, covering a big stretch of wild country. But although some of the near-miss encounters seem arbitrary, this is still a thrill-a-minute wilderness adventure. It's another dizzying tumble down the rabbit hole with Christopher Fowler in THE VICTORIA VANISHES (Bantam, $24), a continuation of the exploits of Arthur Bryant and John May, the oldest detectives on the London police force. As senior investigators in the Peculiar Crimes Unit, the partners are expected to attend to criminal matters that fall outside the norm, but Bryant's insistence that he saw a murder victim near a pub that doesn't exist (it was demolished in 1925) has the entire unit baffled. There's always a serious point to Fowler's drolly mannered mysteries, and here it's the future of London's historic drinking establishments - many of them visited in the course of this devious puzzle. If venerable pubs like the Victoria Cross can fall to "progress," what hope is there for beloved oddballs like Arthur Bryant or crackpot institutions like the P.C.U. - or all those other endangered monuments to England's fabled eccentricity? The dank and sweaty crime scenes in PARIS NOIR (Akashic, paper, $15.95) testify to the fact that the French invented "noir." Among the jarring images in this story collection (astutely edited by Aurélien Masson and translated by David Ball, Nicole Ball, Carol Cosman and Marjolijn de Jager), Didier Daeninckx's murky view of the after-hours scene in Porte Saint-Denis and Marc Villard's gritty look at the sex trade in Les Halles are correctives to all those persistent romantic fantasies about the city. But these grim realities could also do with a corrective, something along the lines of THE PARIS ENIGMA (Harper, $24.95). In this beguiling historical whodunit by the Argentine novelist Pablo De Santis, Paris is visited by Sigmundo Salvatrio, assistant to a founding member of an international association of top detectives, gathered in the city to illustrate their secret techniques and esoteric philosophies at the 1889 World's Fair. His enthusiasm undimmed, even when one of this august company is pushed off the Eiffel Tower, young Salvatrio sees Paris as others saw it at the time - the City of Light in an age of darkness. Reginald Hill's mystery of manners is set in Sandytown, a fictional resort on the Yorkshire coast.
Guardian Review
Nobody does this better than Deaver, the master-twister and trickster extraordinaire. A sheriff's deputy, responding to an emergency call from an isolated lakeside house in Wisconsin, stumbles into the scene of a double murder. Taken unawares, she loses her car and gun and finds herself on the run, with a woman friend of the murdered couple, from a couple of killers in the freezing, pitch-dark vastness of a state park. Thus begins a dance of bluff and double bluff as Deputy Brynn McKenzie desperately tries to shake the killers off their trail. And as if things weren't fraught enough, it turns out that they are not the only people - or things - abroad that night. The pace is terrific, the suspense inexorable, and there is an excellent climax. Unfortunately, too many twists add unnecessary strands to an already complex plot. But if you want thrills, Deaver is still your man. Caption: article-janthrillers.3 Nobody does this better than Deaver, the master-twister and trickster extraordinaire. A sheriff's deputy, responding to an emergency call from an isolated lakeside house in Wisconsin, stumbles into the scene of a double murder. - Matthew Lewin.
Library Journal Review
Deaver delivers a whole new cast of characters--and a ticking bomb. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
SILENCE. The woods around Lake Mondac were as quiet as couldbe, a world of difference from the churning, chaotic city where the couple spent their weekdays. Silence, broken only by an occasional a-hoo-ah of a distant bird, the hollow siren of a frog. And now: another sound. A shuffle of leaves, two impatient snaps of branch or twig. Footsteps? No, that couldn't be. The other vacation houses beside the lake were deserted on this cool Friday afternoon in April. Emma Feldman, in her early thirties, set down her martini on the kitchen table, where she sat across from her husband. She tucked a strand of curly black hair behind her ear and walked to one of the grimy kitchen windows. She saw nothing but dense clusters of cedar, juniper and black spruce rising up a steep hill, whose rocks resembled cracked yellow bone. Her husband lifted an eyebrow. "What was it?" She shrugged and returned to her chair. "I don't know. Didn't see anything." Outside, silence again. Emma, lean as any stark, white birch outside one of the many windows of the vacation house, shook off her blue jacket. She was wearing the matching skirt and a white blouse. Lawyer clothes. Hair in a bun. Lawyer hair. Stockings but shoeless. Steven, turning his attention to the bar, had abandoned his jacket as well, and a wrinkled striped tie. The thirty-six-year-old, with a full head of unruly hair, was in a blue shirt and his belly protruded inexorably over the belt of his navy slacks. Emma didn'tcare; she thought he was cute and always would. "And look what I got," he said, nodding towardthe upstairs guest room and unbagging a large bottle of pulpy organic vegetable juice. Their friend, visiting from Chicago this weekend, had been flirting with liquid diets lately, drinking the most disgusting things. Emma read the ingredients and wrinkled her nose. "It's all hers. I'll stick with vodka." "Why I love you." The house creaked, as it often did. The place was seventy-six years old. It featured an abundance of wood and a scarcity of steel and stone. The kitchen, where they stood, was angular and paneled in glowing yellow pine. The floor was lumpy. The colonial structure was one of three houses on this private road, each squatting on ten acres. It couldbe called lakefront property but only because the lake lapped at a rocky shore two hundred yards from the front door. The house was plopped down in a small clearing on the east side of a substantial elevation. Midwest reserve kept peoplefrom labeling these hills "mountains" here in Wisconsin, though it rose easily seven or eight hundred feet into the air. At the moment the big house was bathed in blue late-afternoon shadows. Emma gazed out at rippling Lake Mondac, far enough from the hill to catch some descending sun. Now, in early spring, the surrounding area was scruffy, reminding of wet hackles rising from a guard dog's back. The house was much nicer than they couldotherwise afford -- they'd bought it through foreclosure -- and she knew from the moment she'd seen it that this was the perfect vacation house. Silence... The colonial also had a pretty colorful history. The owner of a big meatpacking company in Chicago had built the place before World War II. It was discovered years later that much of his fortune had come from selling black-market meat, circumventing the rationing system that limited foods here at home to make sure the troops were nourished. In 1956 the man's body was found floating in the lake; he was possibly the victim of veterans who had learned of his scheme and killed him, then searched the house, looking for the illicit cash he'd hidden here. No ghosts figured in any version of the death, though Emma and Steven couldn't keep from embellishing. When guests were staying here they'd gleefully take note of who kept the bathroom lights on and who braved the dark after hearing the tales. Two more snaps outside. Then a third. Emma frowned. "You hear that? Again, that sound. Outside." Steven glanced out the window. The breeze kicked up now and then. He turned back. Her eyes strayed to her briefcase. "Caught that," he said, chiding. "What?" "Don't even think about opening it." She laughed, though without much humor. "Work-free weekend," he said. "We agreed." "And what's in there?" she asked, nodding at the backpack he carried in lieu of an attaché case. Emma was wrestling the lid off a jar of cocktail olives. "Only two things of relevance, Your Honor: my le Carré novel and that bottle of Merlot I had at work. Shall I introduce the latter into evid..." Voice fading. He looked to the window, through which they could see a tangle of weeds and trees and branches and rocks the color of dinosaur bones. Emma too glanced outside. " That I heard," he said. He refreshed his wife's martini. She dropped olives into both drinks. "What was it?" "Remember that bear?" "He didn'tcome up to the house." They clinked glasses and sipped clear liquor. Steven said, "You seem preoccupied. What's up, the union case?" Research for a corporate acquisition had revealed some possible shenanigans within the lakefront workers union in Milwaukee. The government had become involved and the acquisition was temporarily tabled, which nobody was very happy about. But she said, "This's something else. One of our clients makes car parts." "Right. Kenosha Auto. See? I do listen." She looked at her husband with an astonished glance. "Well, the CEO, turns out, is an absolute prick." She explained about a wrongful death case involving components of a hybrid car engine: a freak accident, a passenger electrocuted. "The head of their R-and-D department...why, he demanded I return all the technical files. Imagine that." Steven said, "I liked your other case better -- that state representative's last will and testament...the sex stuff." "Shhhh," she said, alarmed. "Remember, I never said a word about it." "My lips are sealed." Emma speared an olive and ate it. "And how was your day?" Steven laughed. "Please...I don't make enough to talk about business after hours." The Feldmans were a shining example of a blind date gone right, despite the odds. Emma, a U of W law school valedictorian, daughter of Milwaukee-Chicago money; Steven, a city college bachelor of arts grad from the Brewline, intent on helping society. Their friends gave them six months, tops; the Door County wedding, to which all those friends were invited, had occurred exactly eight months after their first date. Steven pulled a triangle of Brie out of a shopping bag. Found crackers and opened them. "Oh, okay. Just a little." Snap, snap... Her husband frowned. Emma said, "Honey, it's freaking me a little. That was footsteps." The three vacation houses here were eight or nine miles from the nearest shop or gas station and a little over a mile from the county highway, which was accessed via a strip of dirt poorly impersonating a road. Marquette State Park, the biggest in the Wisconsin system, swallowed most of the land in the area; Lake Mondac and these houses made up an enclave of private property. Very private. And very deserted. Steven walked into the utility room, pulled aside the limp beige curtain and gazed past a cut-back crepe myrtle into the side yard. "Nothing. I'm thinking we -- " Emma screamed. "Honey, honey, honey!" her husband cried. A face studied them through the back window. The man's head was covered with a stocking, though you could see crew-cut, blondish hair, a colorful tattoo on his neck. The eyes were halfway surprised to see peopleso close. He wore an olive drab combat jacket. He knocked on the glass with one hand. In the other he was holding a shotgun, muzzle up. He was smiling eerily. "Oh, God," Emma whispered. Steven pulled out his cell phone, flipped it open and punched numbers, telling her, "I'll deal with him. Go lock the front door." Emma ran to the entryway, dropping her glass. The olives spun amid the dancing shards, picking up dust. Crying out, she heard the kitchen door splinter inward. She looked back and saw the intruder with the shotgun rip the phone from her husband's hand and shove him against the wall. A print of an old sepia landscape photograph crashed to the floor. The front door too swung open. A second man, his head also covered with mesh, pushed inside. He had long dark hair, pressed close by the nylon. Taller and stockier than the first, he held a pistol. The black gun was small in his outsized hand. He pushed Emma into the kitchen, where the other man tossed him the cell phone. The bigger one stiffened at the pitch, but caught the phone one-handed. He seemed to grimace in irritation at the toss and dropped the phone in his pocket. Steven said, "Please...What do you...?" Voice quavering. Emma looked away quickly. The less she saw, she was thinking, the better their chances to survive. "Please," Steven said, "Please. You can take whatever you want. Just leave us. Please." Emma stared at the dark pistol in the taller man's hand. He wore a black leather jacket and boots. His were like the other man's, the kind soldiers wear. Both men grew oblivious to the couple. They looked around the house. Emma's husband continued, "Look, you can have whatever you want. We've got a Mercedes outside. I'll get the keys. You -- " "Just, don't talk," the taller man said, gesturing with the pistol. "We have money. And credit cards. Debit card too. I'll give you the PIN." "What do you want?" Emma asked, crying. "Shhh." Somewhere, in its ancient heart, the house creaked once more. Copyright (c) 2008 by Jeffery Deaver Excerpted from The Bodies Left Behind by Jeffery Deaver All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
