Summary and Reviews of The Coffin Dancer by Jeffery Deaver

The Coffin Dancer by Jeffery Deaver

The Coffin Dancer

by Jeffery Deaver
  • Critics' Consensus (3):
  • Readers' Rating (2):
  • First Published:
  • Jul 1, 1998, 352 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Mar 1999, 255 pages
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About This Book

Book Summary

Detective Lincoln Rhyme is on the hunt for an elusive murderer, the Coffin Dancer. He's a brilliant hitman who changes his appearance even faster than he adds to his trail of victims.

Detective Lincoln Rhyme, the foremost criminalist in the NYPD, is on the hunt for an elusive murderer, the Coffin Dancer. He's a brilliant hitman who changes his appearance even faster than he adds to his trail of victims, only one of whom has lived long enough to offer a clue: the assassin has an eerie tattoo on his arm of the Grim Reaper waltzing with a woman in front of a casket.

Like his previous bestselling novels A Maiden's Grave and The Bone Collector, Jeffery Deaver's latest psychological thriller combines spine-chilling forensic detail with a turbocharged plot. In The Coffin Dancer, Rhyme, tragically paralyzed from a line-of-duty accident, continues to tutor his beautiful protégé, Detective Amelia Sachs, in the art of criminal hunting. Rhyme is certain he's seen this killer before, and his suspicion of an earlier encounter fuels a bitter taste for vengeance. When the chameleonlike assassin targets three federal witnesses for death, the stakes reach a new high. Rhyme's brainpower and Sachs's legwork are the only tools they have to track the cunning murderer through the subways, parks, and airports of a darkly painted New York City. And they have only forty-eight hours before the Coffin Dancer strikes again.

With The Coffin Dancer, Deaver -- already an internationally bestselling author whose acclaimed novels have been translated into a dozen languages -- uses his trademark plot twists to keep this fast-paced, masterly thriller steamrolling along with breathtaking speed. This is page-turning suspense of the highest order.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

San Jose Mercury
As good as it gets. There is no thriller today like Jeffery Deaver.

People Magazine
A breakneck thriller....Deaver is a master of ticking-bomb suspense.

The Denver Post
Tightly written. . .unexpected plot twists. . .nearly impossible to put down.

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