Jeffery Deaver - The Coffin Dancer

LINCOLN RHYME IS MORE THAN

YOUR STANDARD NYPD

INTELLECTUAL FORENSICS

GENIUS. HES A CURMUDGEON IN

THE GRAND STYLEFLYING SOLO

ON WITS AND BRAINSMAYBE

THE MOST APPEALING CRUSADER

ANTIHERO SINCE TRAVIS McGEE.

THE WASHINGTON POST

LINCOLN RHYME [IS] A

CRIMINOLOGIST SO

KNOWLEDGEABLE HE MAKES

KAY SCARPETTA LOOK LIKE

A TRAINEE.

DETROIT FREE PRESS

DEAVER WRITES THE TYPES OF

THRILLERS THAT WOULD

CHALLENGE EVEN THE MOST

ENTHUSIASTIC ROLLER-COASTER

RIDER.... HE CRAFTS PROVOCATIVE

OPENING SCENES TO DRAW

READERS IN, SEND CHILLS DOWN

THEIR SPINES AND FORCE THEM

TO TURN THE PAGES. QUICK,

UNEXPECTED PLOT TURNS ARE

GUARANTEED TO KEEP THAT

ADRENALINE PUMPING RIGHT UP

UNTIL THE FINAL PAGES.

CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER

Praise for Jeffery Deaver

and His Heart-Stopping Thrillers

THE COFFIN DANCER

Deaver ... is a master of ticking-bomb suspense.... Rhyme, now a forensic consultant, is more relentless than ever. Especially when, as in his chilling new case, he has a personal score to settle.

People

Deaver revs up the already supercharged tension by cramming all of the action in THE COFFIN DANCER into forty-eight hours.

USA Today

Revelations and reversals punctuate this thriller like a string of firecrackers.... Superb plotting and brisk, no-nonsense prose.

Publishers Weekly

Quick to the punch, THE COFFIN DANCER is diabolically packed with the good stuff: coverups, mystery, action.

Library Journal

Fair warning to newcomers: Author Deaver is just as cunning and deceptive as his killer; dont assume hes run out of tricks until youve run out of pages.

Kirkus Reviews

Readers who like insider information on police and FBI lingo will enjoy details Deaver adds to the dialogue.

St. Petersburg Times

THE BONE COLLECTOR

A People Magazine Page-Turner of the Week

A truly spell-binding mystery/thriller comes along only rarely but this one should be sold with a certificate for home-delivered pizza, an answering machine, and a pair of warm jammies. It is almost impossible to put down.

The Dallas Morning News

A page-turner.

The Detriot News/Free Press

A top-notch thriller.

San Francisco Examiner

[A] breakneck thrill ride.

The Wall Street Journal

Hard to put down, as Rhyme and Sachs make for endearing and perhaps enduring partners.

The Orlando Sentinel

A MAIDENS GRAVE

A stunner.... Most readers will be losing their sleep over Deavers outsized thriller.

Kirkus Reviews

The shifts in the balance of power and testing the limits between predator and prey build crisis after crisis into this elegant siege thriller.

Daily Mail (London)

Outstanding, gripping, brilliant, spectacular, with heartbreakingly real characters, a plot with double-whammy twists.... A great thriller.

Publishers Weekly

Compelling suspense.... A chilling web of madness and violence ... an all-night page-turner!

San Francisco Chronicle

PRAYING FOR SLEEP

Scary, smart, and compulsively readable.

Stephen King

Undeniably throat-clutching.

Publishers Weekly

The writing is superior, the plotting is delirious.

James Patterson

MISTRESS OF JUSTICE

This is excellent entertainment.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Books by Jeffery Deaver

The Coffin Dancer

The Bone Collector

A Maidens Grave

Praying for Sleep

The Lesson of Her Death

Mistress of Justice

Hard News

Death of a Blue Movie Star

Manhattan Is My Beat

Writing as William Jefferies

Bloody River

Blues Shallow Graves

For orders other than by individual consumers, Pocket Books grants a discount on the purchase of 10 or more copies of single titles for special markets or premium use. For further details, please write to the Vice-President of Special Markets, Pocket Books, 1633 Broadway, New York, NY 10019-6785, 8th Floor.

For information on how individual consumers can place orders, please write to Mail Order Department, Simon & Schuster Inc., 200 Old Tappan Road, Old Tappan, NJ 07675.

To the memory of my grandmother

Ethel May Rider

The sale of this book without its cover Is unauthorized. If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that it was reported to the publisher as unsold and destroyed. Neither the author nor the publisher has received payment for the sale of this stripped book.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster Inc.

1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

Copyright 1998 by Jeffery Deaver

Originally published in hardcover in 1998 by Simon & Schuster Inc.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Simon & Schuster Inc. 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

ISBN: 0-671-02409-4

First Pocket Books printing March 1999

10 9 8 I 6 5 4 3 2 1

POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster Inc.

Cover art by Anita Kunz

Printed in the U.SA.

All writers know that their books are only partly products of their own efforts. Novels are molded by our loved ones and friends, sometimes directly, sometimes in more subtle but no less important ways. Id like to say thanks to some of the people whove helped me with this book: To Madelyn Warcholik for keeping my characters true to themselves, for making sure my plots dont move so recklessly they get pulled over for speeding, and for being an unlimited source of inspiration. To editors David Rosenthal, Marysue Rucci, and Carolyn Mays for brilliantly and unflinchingly doing all the hard work. To agent Deborah Schneider for being the best in the business. And to my sister and fellow author, Julie Reece Deaver, for being there throughout it all.

No hawk can be a pet. There is no sentimentality. In a way, it is the psychiatrists art. One is matching ones mind against another mind with deadly reason and interest.

The Goshawk,

T. H. White

When Edward Carney said good-bye to his wife, Percey, he never thought it would be the last time hed see her.

He climbed into his car, which was parked in a precious space on East Eighty-first Street in Manhattan, and pulled into traffic. Carney, an observant man by nature, noticed a black van parked near their town house. A van with mud-flecked, mirrored windows. He glanced at the battered vehicle and recognized the West Virginia plates, realizing hed seen the van on the street several times in the past few days. But then the traffic in front of him sped up. He caught the end of the yellow light and forgot the van completely. He was soon on the FDR Drive, cruising north.