And how's the reading challenge going?

See here for an explanation.

I finished the Jeffery Deaver. Pretty typical stuff. The Skin Collector references his arguably most successful title The Bone Collector.

Ironside: Subliminal racism? 

(It was made into a film starring Denzel Washington after all. Nothing intentionally racist - but I never imagined Lincoln Rhyme as black. I could see Thom, his assistant, as black though. I suspect I saw too many episodes of Ironside when I was a kid.  And while we're on the topic of casting book characters for movies.... Angelina Jolie?  Really?")

I digress.

If you've read many Deaver you'll know the formula and you'll be able to work out whodunnit. Or at least it won't come as a big surprise because there's always a twist in the tale isn't there? And this one was a bit predictable really. I guess the real fun in the series is JD's creative ways of killing people, rather than the Holmesian ways he solves the crimes.

(Rhyme is very arrogant in the same way Sherlock was, and I'm not sure which I find most irritating: the gloating, or the conviction that no-one else could do it.)

Anyway, using a tattoo machine to inject poison is a novel way to kill someone and the murder is beautifully described in Deaver's unique and detailed style. A very good start that draws you in, particularly if you are inked yourself.

Currently on  a YA novel that I'll tell you more about another time. I'm still not sure why it's defined as 'YA' (Young Adult fiction) other than it's about a shooting at a US high school and written from the perspective of one of those involved. Of course I'm not a 'YA' and I suspect the author isn't either, so I have no idea how authentic it is, but it's not a bad read so far.

Watch this space. 

Thursday extract: you just never know.....

LANGUAGE WARNING - this quoted extract contains strong language and some words that could be considered insulting or defamatory.

'Who you?'
'Friend of DeLisle Marshall. Was on S block with him.'
'Lisle?' The skinny guy relaxed. Some. He looked away from the man who could break him in half and surveyed the world. 'Lisle out?'
Jax laughed. 'Lisle put four rounds into some sad motherfucker's head. There'll be a nigger in the White House 'fore Lisle gets out.'

The Twelfth Card
Jeffery Deaver
2005

Yes - 2005.
Barack Hussein Obama II was elected President of the United States of America in November 2008 and assumed office on January 20 the following year.  Sometimes I forget how unlikely that seemed just a few years earlier!

Thursday extracts: A lesson in forensics – and suspense – from Jeffery Deaver

Crime fiction is one of my little indulgences. I love reading a good murder story, and one of my favourite authors is Jeffery Deaver. He has a number of regular characters but maybe his best known is Lincoln Rhyme, the quadriplegic detective (played by Denzel Washington in the film The Bone Collector). Rhyme is not only a modern-day Sherlock Holmes, who can determine the most obscure facts from the least obvious observations, but he is also a forensics master.

Deaver loves to pass on the how and why of crime science and relates his lectures to the relevant stage in whatever investigation Rhyme is running. In this extract the crime scene technicians have removed a complete door and its frame from a site where a bomb was supposed to have gone off and destroyed all the evidence - except it failed to explode. The detectives assume that the perpetrator would not have bothered to use gloves because he was not expecting the door to survive. They are hoping to lift fingerprints.

*********

Fingerprints fall into one of three categories. Visible (the sort left by a bloody thumb on a white wall), impressible (left in pliable material like plastic explosive), and latent (hidden to the unaided eye). There were dozens of good ways to raise latent prints but one of the best, on metal surfaces, was simply to use store-bought Super Glue, cyanoacrylate. The object would be put in an airtight enclosure with a container f the glue, which would then be heated until it turned gaseous. The vapors would bond with any number of substances left by the finger – amino and lactic acids, glucose, potassium and carbon trioxide – and the resulting reaction created a visible print.

The process could work miracles, raising prints that were completely invisible before.

Except not in this case.

"Nothing," Pulaski said, discouraged, "Only glove smudges."

Jeffery Deaver. The Burning Wire. 2010. Hodder & Stoughton.