Ok, here’s my third Deaver. Definitely my last for a while, and maybe forever. Of the three I’ve read, The Burning Wire is the best, I think, so maybe I should quit now.

Deaver loves to research a subject to death, then make a novel out of the results. Something like Ian McEwan, who’s done both a doctor and a composer and probably others of which I know not. In the last book I read, The Kill Room, it was Drones. Here, it’s electricity and the grid.

Under the guise of saving the earth, a malicious malcontent has figured out devious ways to interrupt and destroy the electric power channels and blackmail people into various actions against their will. It’s a fine plot, full of stuff-you-never-thought-of in relation to your everyday electricity use.

There are subplots about a criminal Lincoln Rhyme’s been chasing for years and concerning his right hand woman’s arthritis, both of which are merged nicely with the main plot near the book’s conclusion. I had none of the problems I had with The Kill Room and The Broken Window, so all in all, I can give this one a hearty recommendation for some good sleuthing by a quadriplegic and original crime and writing that’s uncontaminated by the elements I found in the other two books.