Watching the Watchmaker

A “Cold Moon” is the one that circles the earth during the winter months, like the “Harvest Moon” does in late fall. In the hands of suspense writer Jeffery Deaver, “The Cold Moon” circles around a cruelly-evil serial killer who calls himself the Watchmaker.

Deaver’s novels follow the crime-fighting forensics team of Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs, the former being a near-genius investigator who is wheelchair bound as a result of a job-related paralysis. (In earlier books, Rhyme is confined to bed.) The footwork at the crime scenes is provided by Sachs, who stays in contact with her partner by way of a special radio headset.

They’ve worked a number of cases together, “The Bone Collector” being the first and perhaps best-known, from the movie adaptation. Over the years, Deaver has introduced readers to enough background about his stars that they seem like members of the family.

The Watchmaker is so good (read that “evil”) that he leaves few clues, and the forensics skills of the crime team need a little super-interrogating assistance. Enter Kathryn Dance, a California investigator whose specialty is getting to the facts. No waterboarding here, it’s more like a tingly-spiderman-sense-thing. She knows a fib when she hears it, and she ferrets out the truth just like your mother did when the antique lamp turned up broken.

The Dance character is so strong that Deaver made her the primary player in his next hardback and plans to alternate his writing between Dance and Rhyme. In the meantime, he continues to layer on the depth of his characters, and in “The Cold Moon,” Amelia Sachs faces enough hard truths that she considers leaving the force.

Holmes without Watson? Rhyme without Sachs? Rhyme without Reason? In the case of “The Cold Moon” and the Watchmaker, only time will tell.