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THE BODIES LEFT BEHIND
by Jeffery Deaver
Hodder & Stoughton, October 2009
488 pages
7.99 GBP
ISBN: 0340994037


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Deaver is on top form with this novel, there is absolutely no doubt about that. The reader follows off-duty detective Brynn McKenzie as she attends the scene of a cut-off emergency call which ends in a double-murder. Almost immediately, Brynn, together with one survivor, is thrown into a lethal game of hide-and-seek with the killers in dense woodland surrounding a deserted lake.

The book alternates between following Brynn and her very off-balance companion, a friend of the murdered couple who would be more at home in a shopping mall than in the great outdoors at night, and the two killers. As a result, the reader gets to see two different perspectives on many the book's multitudinous twists and turns. The story unfolds into an increasingly dangerous game of bluff and double-bluff where Brynn has to make inventive use of improvised weapons and the killers have to try and second-guess her movements.

The scenes in the forest are tense and clever and in spite of the level of detail, always a characteristic of Deaver's writing, I never found it boring. The more we saw of the contract killer and his hired-help the more I felt I was forming bonds with them as well as with their intended victims. For me this stands as a testament to the depth of Deaver's writing and his ability to suck the reader into feeling sympathy with his characters on all sides of the moral spectrum. It was also interesting to watch the development of the relationship between the two men as they were each forced very rapidly outside their own comfort zones, for one of them in the house and its immediate surrounds and then for the other in the harsher environment of the forest.

At first it appears that the book will be nothing more than a tale of cat-and-mouse in the wilderness, but then further strands develop in the story, drawing the reader into increasingly murky waters and providing more twists and turns than a fun-fair maze.

In common with nearly all law-enforcement main characters, Brynn has a troubled past, but Deaver doesn't labour this particular point unduly, and the final reveal on this particular sub-plot, when it comes, did manage to take me by surprise.

I've read very mixed reviews of this book elsewhere, but I found it an excellent read and would recommend it without hesitation both to fans of Deaver's other work and to those coming new to his writing.

Reviewed by Linda Wilson, January 2010

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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