lightreads | The Cold Moon by Jeffery Deaver

Fiction. Mystery. Latest in the Lincoln Rime series, featuring the quadriplegic forensic investigator. Oh, Jeff. You were doing so well for the first 250 pages: the villain was thoroughly creepifying, the forensics were engaging and CSI-like, and the characters’ personal lives were actually interesting, too. And then we took a sharp left turn into exposition land, where the narrator takes over the story for five or ten pages at a stretch to explain that the villain really isn’t after what we thought (haven’t you written this book before? Twice?) and what he is after is a lot less interesting than the whole serial killer jaunt. It hurts me when you do this. To your credit, there were some interesting, if fumble-fingered, threads about the duties of a capital L Liberal in these over-patriotic times, and the villain promises to become more interesting again in a later book. Props for the good old college try, but let’s aim a bit higher next time, okay?