A Maiden's Grave by Jeffery Deaver

A Maiden's Grave

by Jeffery Deaver

Personal Review/Comments

I dunno. This has been called "Deaver's best to date" (Publishers Weekly). Jeffery Deaver is also the author of Praying for Sleep, another best-selling book. But I still dunno. I enjoyed reading it. It is a quick read as it pulls you along with no remission and you go from beginning to end, engrossed. But on reflection, after the book is closed, I am not at all sure I enjoyed this as much as I did his other books (e.g. The Bone Collector). Yes, there are some twists and turns and surprises but on reflection, the characters get shallower and less probable until in the end, it is more like Mr. Deaver was "forcing" the characters do something that does not at all seem in line with their character portrayal up to that point. You will have to judge for yourself if you find this believable. Summary? Enjoyable but not very believable.

Synopsis

Eight students and two teachers from a school for the deaf are kidnapped on a remote Kansas highway by three murderous escaped convicts. They are held hostage in an abandoned slaughterhouse for 18 hours while the FBI's top negotiator, Arthur Potter, attempts to secure their release. The situation is made more difficult because the leader of the convicts is as brilliant in his way as Potter is in his. Meanwhile, reporters are crawling all over the security zone Potter has established, politicians are preening for the cameras, and rival law enforcement agencies are hatching their own rescue plots. Deaver has taken what could have been a routine plot and created a spine-tingling thriller by his judicious use of time, outstanding characterizations, and a plot twist near the end of the book that is as logical as it is startling. In Arthur Potter, he introduces a sympathetic and human hero, a complex, moralistic man who can only succeed at his craft by befriending the vilest criminals and then betraying them. Deaver has also succeeded in making his deaf characters vivid individuals, without a hint of patronizing.

Book Review

"Deaver knits a seamless fabric of tightening tension right up to an explosive double whammy ending." - The Times

"The climax of A Maiden's Grave is to thriller fiction what Fatal Attraction is to film. One's sense of conclusion is shattered by a clever twist which is as frightening as it is unexpected." - Linda Joy, Dymocks Booksellers, Australia