The Burial Hour

[cornerofmadness]

The Burial Hour by Jeffery Deaver
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

More like a 2.5 read. For one it had too much going on making it so much longer than it needed to be and the twist at the end was just so unbelievable that it was hard not to roll your eyes. If this had been a straight up track the serial kidnapper (without his hard to swallow reasoning) story it would have been more enjoyable.

I am curious though how Sachs and Tom keep from smothering Rhyme in his sleep. What is it with mysteries and cold, logical and outrightly emotionally/verbally abusive sleuths?

Anyhow Sachs and Lincoln are about to marry and he's insisting their honeymoon be some boring forensics outing when a kidnapper leaving a little noose at the scene strikes NYC. This man, the Composer, takes the sounds of a person's near-strangulation and sets it to music to satisfy his muse (we spend a good deal of time in his head).

He escapes and ends up in Italy where a forestry officer is almost on the scene of the next kidnapping in helping out the detectives, he contacts Sachs. Naturally they show up and end up partnered with him.

And if that was all the story was it would have been SO much more enjoyable. Instead it's like Deaver's just had to work in everything he'd learned about the Meredith Kercher/Amanda Knox case to highlight Italian justice issues so we have a case within a case that the diplomats pull Sachs onto some rape case with an American student who swears he's innocent.

It was unneeded and a distraction and honestly I wish it had been left out of the story right along with the political/ black ops underpining of the Composer's crimes which felt like a long set up to move Sachs into the state department in future books.

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