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The Broken Window (2008)
Data mining is the industry of the 21st century. Commercial companies collect information about us from thousands of sources—credit cards, loyalty programs, hidden radio tags in products, medical histories, employment and banking records, government filings, and many more—then analyze and sell the data to anyone willing to pay the going rate. Some people approve, citing economic benefits; others worry about the erosion of privacy.
But no one has been prepared for a new twist: A psychotic killer with access to the country's biggest data miner—Strategic Systems Datacorp—is using detailed information to work
his way into the lives of victims, rape, rob and kill them and then blame unsuspecting innocents for the crimes. The killer's voluminous knowledge of the victims and his ability to plant damning evidence
mean that even the most vocal protests of innocence go ignored by the police and juries.
The perp has, in short, found a perfect means to literally get away with murder—until one
of his fall guys turns out to be Lincoln Rhyme's cousin, Arthur, who is facing certain conviction for first-degree murder. Though the two Rhymes haven't had any contact for years, Lincoln agrees to look
into the case. In the process he unravels a spider web of crime that the killer, known only as Unknown Subject 522, has woven.
Rhyme, Amelia Sachs and the cast of the previous
Rhyme books find themselves up against their most insidious villain, a man obsessed with collecting—from junk on the street to intimate details about our lives to the ultimate trophy: human lives
themselves, which he sees as mere streams of data. This is a man proficient with razors and guns, but whose most dangerous weapon is information, which he wields with ruthless precision against those he
targets on whim . . . and against those who try to stop him.
"How," Rhyme says, "can you defend yourself against the man who knows everything?"
As the invisible 522 attacks his pursuers through identity theft and outright torture and murder, the stymied police have to turn to the likely source of the data the killer uses—the eerie and
monolithic Strategic Systems Datacorp, headed by the legendary data mining pioneer, Andrew Sterling, whose "mission" is the creation of a global empire based not on politics or money but on
information.
"Knowledge is power," Sterling continually reminds.
And for Lincoln Rhyme, the case has an added dimension: Arthur's reemergence draws
him back to his childhood and teen years and forces the criminalist to grapple with a tragedy from his past he has avoided for decades.
The Broken Window is classic Deaver fare: Taking place over three frantic days, the novel features dozens of twists and turns, fascinating, highly researched details—about identity theft, data mining and threats to privacy, as well as forensic science—and, of course, offers the typical multiple surprise endings the author is known for crafting.
The Broken Window has been released in the USA, Canada, the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and Italy.
Reviews:
"Seven books on, most series start to get a bit thin. The characters are doing the same things over and over and the plots get stretched. Which is why The Broken Window is such a
surprise. This eighth novel featuring quadriplegic forensic expert Lincoln Rhyme is one of Deaver's best. Same characters, but the plot, built around identity theft, is riveting. The case for Rhyme, this
time, is close to home. His cousin, Arthur, has been arrested for murder. The forensic evidence against him is solid. In fact, it's perfect, so perfect that it can't all be real; no one could leave all
that trace behind at a crime scene. But that's Rhyme's riddle. The police are satisfied and Arthur is in jail awaiting trial. It doesn't take Rhyme and his partner/lover, Amelia Sachs, long to find out
that the evidence against Arthur has been artificially planted. The problem is how and by whom? The trail leads to a huge multinational corporation with information on millions of people, and eventually
to a killer so clever he can turn the tables on Rhyme and Sachs as they search for him. If you've even been worried about all the info an online hunter could uncover about you, this is one scary novel.
Everything in it seems as plausible and easy as buying a purse on eBay. Deaver has outdone himself."
— Margaret Cannon, The Globe and Mail
"The topical subject matter makes the story line particularly compelling, while longtime fans will relish Deaver's intimate exploration of a tragedy from Rhyme's adolescence."
— Publishers Weekly
"Quadriplegic forensics whiz Lincoln Rhyme and his Glock-toting girlfriend, Amelia Sachs, track a serial killer who uses an all-knowing computer database to frame fall guys. Movie Pitch: Ironside meets CSI and Enemy of the State. Bottom Line: Rhyme still intrigues in his eighth outing, while Deaver's scarily believable depiction of identity theft in a total-surveillance society stokes our paranoia. A -."
— Entertainment Weekly
"Anxious about identity theft? Well, as a Jeffery Deaver character says, "If somebody wants to destroy your life, there's nothing you can do about it." That's the theme of THE BROKEN WINDOW (Simon &
Schuster, $26.95), one of the most unnerving of Deaver's eight novels featuring his quadriplegic forensic detective, Lincoln Rhyme. Smarter and scarier than the genre's garden-variety nut jobs, the mad
genius at work in this book takes pride in penetrating secure databases. After stripping people of an essential piece of their lives, he frames them for his own murderous deeds. But here, the
rape-torture-killing element seems largely just a concession to the sensationalistic formula of the thriller. Deaver is far more caught up in the devious mechanics of identity fraud, analyzed in depth by
Rhyme once it's determined that the killer has access to the supersecret files of a data-mining company whose clients include government agencies. While murder is still murder, the image that lingers in
this Orwellian nightmare is that of the villain's original guinea pig, once a doctor, now a wretch who calls himself Job and lives in flophouses, hiding from the angry God who stole his life."
— Marilyn Stasio, New York Times
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