Jeffery Deaver has outdone himself with this one. His character "The Locksmith" breaks into the apartments of women in New York, simply by just easily picking their locks. Once he is in, he moves their belongings around and sits and watches them sleep. Then he takes a single knife from each of the apartments. This we learn, "bothers Lincoln". Yeah, Lincoln... do you think??? It more than bothered me! Lincoln believes that the perp could eventually escalate to murder before he can be stopped. With this installment with Lincoln Rhymes, Jeffery Deaver has created a tense, exciting and mystery packed story in which nothing is as it appears, and deception and treachery are the main part of the game. Creepy doesn't begin to describe the feeling you get reading about what these women find when they awake and find that someone was a close as sitting in a chair by your bed, watching every breath you take. The sense of threat, is overwhelming, producing a scenario that has your pulse pounding without anyone having to even take a step. The "Locksmith" delights in knowing that he can ruin everything for his victims and leave them with only fear as a companion. There is of course a threat to their lives, but what he does and how he makes them feel is maybe far worse. The ideas and possibilities of how easy home invasion, stalking, and potential threat to life actually is, will have you locking and double locking doors and checking them all twice as this story stays with you long after the last word on the page. One of the best stories to come out of the 15 Lincoln Rhymes books. ( )

A criminal known as The Locksmith is terrorizing the city. He can break into supposedly secure homes without a sound. He leaves things disturbed and items are placed in disturbing ways, chilling the victims, all of whom are female. He hasn’t physically hurt anyone - yet - but the psychological damage is huge. Meanwhile, Lincoln Rhyme is having troubles of his own. Contaminating a crime scene leads to the dismissal of charges against the accused and the dismissal of Rhyme as a consultant. The story is a strange one. The plot is all over the place, and in listening to the audio version, it was often difficult to figure out who was speaking, since the story is told from different points of view. It was hard to get invested in the story; much of the beginning plot was vague and disjointed. But about half way through, things started to fall in place. And yet, there were quite a lot of misleading plot threads, things happened that really didn’t happen, secrets were being kept from the reader, and many plot twists along the way. Eventually, it turned quite suspenseful and finally started to made sense. This was my first Lincoln Rhyme novel, and probably not a good one to start with! But I am intrigued enough with the characters to go back to the beginning of the series, even though I don’t think the author played fair with his readers in this one. ( )

2022 Book #24. 2021. It hardly matters what the book is about, Lincoln Rhyme out thinks the bad guy again. Deever's stock in trade is misdirection and there's just too much of that here. I keep saying this is my last Deever, I think I'm gonna stick with it this time. ( )

Thank you to Bookreporter for this book.

Sorry to say I can only give it 2.5 stars.

This is my first book by this author and probably will be my last. I only finished it because it was fast reading and I was interested in Amanda Sachs and Lincoln Rhymes, the married couple who I assume are the main characters in the other 14 books. It was not a bad book just not my type and not very suspenseful. ( )

Jeffrey Deaver is the master of the forensic procedural and indeed crime fiction storytelling. With Lincoln Rhyme, he has created a truly iconic character. His villains are always deep, dark, and perfectly drawn. The Midnight Lock is no exception. A great read, a great story, and top drawer writing as always. Couldn't recommend it more highly.

DP Lyle, award-winning author of the Jake Longly and Cain/Harper thriller series ( )