The stone monkey

Review by Booklist Review

Deaver's latest page-turner begins aboard Fuzhou Dragon, a ship full of undocumented Chinese seeking refuge in Meiguo, "the Beautiful Country," America. The "snakehead" (refugee smuggler) on this voyage is the Ghost, whose plan for a quiet, unnoticed landing on Long Island goes awry when, a few miles from shore, he notices FBI agents waiting at the dock. Not one for loyalty, the Ghost, at the peril of women and children and many other terrified passengers, sabotages the vessel with explosives and boards a raft to safety. Having thwarted his attempted capture, the Ghost goes into hiding among the millions of Chinese immigrants in New York. So, too, do two lucky families who managed to escape the sinking Dragon. Thus begins the manhunt for the Ghost, led by forensics specialists Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs. But the Ghost is on a hunt himself, eager to kill the two families before they have a chance to rat him out. The methodical, technical way in which the detectives conduct their search stands in stark contrast to the Ghost's paranoid, frenetic manner; thankfully, Rhyme's and Sachs' characters, first introduced in The Bone Collector (1996), are more well developed here than they were in earlier outings. The series' mass popularity, however, is certain to continue with or without improved characterization. --Mary Frances Wilkens

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Library Journal Review

Hidden aboard the cargo ship Fuzhou Dragon, approximately two dozen illegal Chinese immigrants head for the promise of a better future in the United States. The ruthless man in charge of this cargo is a professional human smuggler and killer nicknamed the Ghost. When the Coast Guard tries to stop the ship and capture the Ghost, the ship takes on water, and the Ghost blows up the cargo hold. The surviving immigrants grab hold of a lifeboat and make it to land. Trying to start their new lives, they must remain in hiding because the Ghost is tracking them, determined to kill every single immigrant left. The task of stopping the Ghost before he accomplishes his goal falls to Lincoln Rhyme and his partner, Amelia Sachs, characters first introduced in Deaver's The Bone Collector. The mind game that follows will push Rhyme to the limit of his abilities and call into question the loyalty of the people working with him. With this elaborate thriller, Deaver has written his best book to date. He balances the complexities of Chinese culture with the page-turning suspense we expect. Highly recommended. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 1/ 02.] Jeff Ayers, Seattle P.L. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by School Library Journal Review

Adult/High School-The FBI and immigration officials are ready to intercept a cargo vessel filled with illegal Chinese immigrants who have paid huge sums of money to be smuggled into the United States. The man at the helm and ruthless organizer of the smuggling enterprise is code-named "the Ghost." As the authorities approach, he blows up the boat, locking the Chinese inside while he flees. Two families survive the explosion and swim to shore. Wheelchair-bound forensics-expert Lincoln Rhyme and his partner/lover Amelia Sachs begin the race against time to find the families before the Ghost kills them. With enough twists and turns to make readers dizzy, Lincoln and Amelia track him down. Time and again readers are convinced of the Ghost's identity and location only to realize they have been misled. This action-packed novel will keep YAs entertained and guessing until the last page.-Katherine Fitch, Rachel Carson Middle School, Fairfax, VA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

An expert but oddly uninvolving thriller in which a murderous Chinese smuggler of illegals tracks the survivors of a disastrous Long Island landing, hotly pursued himself by a galaxy of cops directed by quadriplegic criminalist Lincoln Rhyme. The ship carrying Kwan Ang, the snakehead better known as Gui, the Ghost, and his cargo of human "piglets" has almost made land when he finds the Coast Guard bearing down on him and promptly blows up the ship, planning to escape to shore and disappear in Manhattan's Chinatown. But ten members of two families, mostly women and children, succeed in escaping as well, along with ruthless Sonny Li and dissident physician John Sung, who fall into the hands of the FBI. The other survivors, whose testimony could put the Ghost away for a good long time, vanish into the bowels of the city. Can Rhyme, together with Crime Scene officer Amelia Sachs, his eyes, ears, and love, and dozens of bigwigs and minions from the NYPD, the FBI, and the INS catch up with the Ghost before-aided by a bangshou, an unnamed source within the investigation-he catches up with the families who refused to die? Veterans of the series won't be surprised by Deaver's surgical skill in cutting between predators and prey, setting up taxing ordeals and violent confrontations, and springing surprises long after a less inventive plotter would have thrown in the towel. But because he never develops the potential victims in the Wu and Chang families, the nonstop battle between good and evil remains nearly as abstract as the wei-chi game it's constantly compared to. So many incidental pleasures that it seems ungracious to note that, like Rhyme's last case (The Empty Chair, 2000, etc.), this one seems detached and synthetic, like a five-finger exercise for some awfully busy fingers. First printing of 250,000; author tour

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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Chapter One They were the vanished, they were the unfortunate. To the human smugglers -- the snakeheads -- who carted them around the world like pallets of damaged goods, they were ju-jia, piglets. To the American INS agents who interdicted their ships and arrested and deported them they were undocumenteds. They were the hopeful. Who were trading homes and family and a thousand years of ancestry for the hard certainty of risky, laborious years ahead of them. Who had the slimmest of chances to take root in a place where their families could prosper, where freedom and money and contentment were, the story went, as common as sunlight and rain. They were his fragile cargo. And now, legs steady against the raging, five-meter-high seas, Captain Sen Zi-jun made his way from the bridge down two decks into the murky hold to deliver the grim message that their weeks of difficult journeying might have been in vain. It was just before dawn on a Tuesday in August. The stocky captain, whose head was shaved and who sported an elaborate bushy mustache, slipped past the empty containers lashed to the deck of the seventy-two-meter Fuzhou Dragon as camouflage and opened the heavy steel door to the hold. He looked down at the two-dozen people huddled there, in the grim, windowless space. Trash and children's plastic blocks floated in the shallow tide under the cheap cots. Despite the pitching waves, Captain Sen -- a thirty-year veteran of the seas -- walked down the steep metal steps without using the handrails and strode into the middle of the hold. He checked the carbon dioxide meter and found the levels acceptable though the air was vile with the smell of diesel fuel and humans who'd lived for two weeks in close proximity. Unlike many of the captains and crew who operated "buckets" -- human smuggling ships -- and who at best ignored or sometimes even beat or raped the passengers, Sen didn't mistreat them. Indeed he believed that he was doing a good thing: transporting these families from difficulty to, if not certain wealth, at least the hope of a happy life in America, Meiguo in Chinese, which means the "Beautiful Country." On this particular voyage, however, most of the immigrants distrusted him. And why not? They assumed he was in league with the snakehead who'd chartered the Dragon: Kwan Ang, known universally by his nickname, Gui, the Ghost. Tainted by the snakehead's reputation for violence, Captain Sen's efforts to engage the immigrants in conversation had been rebuffed and had yielded only one friend. Chang Jingerzi -- who preferred his Western name of Sam Chang -- was a forty-five-year-old former college professor from a suburb of the huge port city of Fuzhou in southeastern China. He was bringing his entire family to America: his wife, two sons and Chang's widower father. A half-dozen times on the trip Chang and Sen had sat in the hold, sipped the potent mao-tai that the captain always had in good supply on his ship and talked about life in China and in the United States. Captain Sen now saw Chang sitting on a cot in a forward corner of the hold. The tall, placid man frowned, a reaction to the look in the captain's eyes. Chang handed his teenage son the book he'd been reading to his family and rose to meet the captain. Everyone around them fell silent. "Our radar shows a fast-moving ship on course to intercept us." Dismay blossomed in the faces of those who'd overheard. "The Americans?" Chang asked. "Their Coast Guard?" "I think it must be," the captain answered. "We're in U.S. waters." Sen looked at the frightened faces of the immigrants around him. Like most shiploads of illegals that Sen had transported, these people -- many of them strangers before they'd met -- had formed a close bond of friendship. And they now gripped hands or whispered among themselves, some seeking, some offering reassurance. The captain's eyes settled on a woman holding an eighteen-month-old girl in her arms. Her mother -- whose face was scarred from a beating at a reeducation camp -- lowered her head and began to cry. "What can we do?" Chang asked, troubled. Captain Sen knew he was a vocal dissident in China and had been desperate to flee the country. If he was deported by U.S. Immigration he'd probably end up in one of the infamous jails in western China as a political prisoner. "We're not far from the drop-off spot. We're running at full speed. It may be possible to get close enough to put you ashore in rafts." "No, no," Chang said. "In these waves? We'd all die." "There's a natural harbor I'm steering for. It should be calm enough for you to board the rafts. At the beach there'll be trucks to take you to New York." "And what about you?" Chang asked. "I'll head back into the storm. By the time it's safe for them to board you'll be on highways of gold, heading toward the city of diamonds....Now tell everyone to get their belongings together. But only the most important things. Your money, your pictures. Leave everything else. It will be a race to the shore. Stay below until the Ghost or I tell you to come up top." Captain Sen hurried up the steep ladder, on his way to the bridge. As he climbed he said a brief prayer for their survival to Tian Hou, the goddess of sailors, then dodged a wall of gray water that vaulted the side of the ship. On the bridge he found the Ghost standing over the radar unit, staring into the rubber glare shade. The man stood completely still, bracing himself against the rolling of the sea. Some snakeheads dressed as if they were wealthy Cantonese gangsters from a John Woo film but the Ghost always wore the standard outfit of most Chinese men -- simple slacks and short-sleeved shirts. He was muscular but diminutive, clean-shaven, hair longer than a typical businessman's but never styled with cream or spray. "They will intercept us in fifteen minutes," the snakehead said. Even now, facing interdiction and arrest, he seemed as lethargic as a ticket seller in a rural long-distance bus station. "Fifteen?" the captain replied. "Impossible. How many knots are they making?" Sen walked to the chart table, the centerpiece of all ocean-crossing vessels. On it sat a U.S. Defense Mapping Agency nautical chart of the area. He had to judge the two ships' relative positions from this and from the radar; because of the risk of being traced, the Dragon's global positioning system and her EPIRB emergency beacon and Global Maritime Distress and Safety System were disconnected. "I think it will be at least forty minutes," the captain said. "No, I timed the distance they've traveled since we spotted them." Captain Sen glanced at the crewman piloting the Fuzhou Dragon, sweating as he gripped the wheel in his struggle to keep the Turk's head knot of twine, tied around a spoke, straight up, indicating that the rudder was aligned with the hull. The throttles were full forward. If the Ghost was right in his assessment of when the cutter would intercept them they would not be able to make the protected harbor in time. At best they could get within a half mile of the nearby rocky shore -- close enough to launch the rafts but subjecting them to merciless pounding by the tempestuous seas. The Ghost asked the captain, "What sort of weapons will they have?" "Don't you know?" "I've never been interdicted," the Ghost replied. "Tell me." Ships under Sen's command had been stopped and boarded twice before -- fortunately on legitimate voyages, not when he was running immigrants for snakeheads. But the experience had been harrowing. A dozen armed Coast Guard sailors had streamed onto the vessel while another one, on the deck of the cutter, had trained a two-barreled machine gun on him and his crew. There'd been a small cannon too. He now told the Ghost what they might expect. The Ghost nodded. "We need to consider our options." "What options?" Captain Sen now asked. "You're not thinking of fighting them, are you? No. I won't allow it." But the snakehead didn't answer. He remained braced at the radar stand, staring at the screen. The man seemed placid but, Sen supposed, he must've been enraged. No snakehead he'd ever worked with had taken so many precautions to avoid capture and detection as the Ghost on this voyage. The two-dozen immigrants had met in an abandoned warehouse outside of Fuzhou and waited there for two days, under the watch of a partner of the Ghost's -- a "little snakehead." The man had then loaded the Chinese onto a chartered Tupolev 154, which had flown to a deserted military airfield near St. Petersburg in Russia. There they'd climbed into a shipping container, been driven 120 kilometers to the town of Vyborg and boarded the Fuzhou Dragon, which Sen had sailed into the Russian port just the day before. He himself had meticulously filled out the customs documents and manifests -- everything according to the book, so as not to arouse suspicion. The Ghost had joined them at the last minute and the ship had sailed on schedule. Through the Baltic Sea, the North Sea, the English Channel, then the Dragon had crossed the famous starting point of transatlantic voyages in the Celtic Sea -- 490N 70W -- and had begun steaming southwest toward Long Island, New York. There was not a single thing about the voyage that would arouse the suspicion of the U.S. authorities. "How did the Coast Guard do it?" the captain asked. "What?" the Ghost responded absently. "Find us. No one could have. It's impossible." The Ghost straightened up and pushed outside into the raging wind, calling back, "Who knows? Maybe it was magic." Copyright © 2002 by Jeffery Deaver Excerpted from The Stone Monkey by Jeffery Deaver All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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