This is the description of the story from Deaver’s official page:
Taylor Lockwood juggles twin careers as a struggling jazz musician in seedy Manhattan clubs and a paralegal at the genteel Wall Street law firm of Hubbard, White & Willis. When a multimillion-dollar promissory note is stolen from his office, Mitchell Reece, a young trial lawyer, desperately enlists her aid to save both his career and, very possibly, the firm itself. Taylor agrees, intrigued by both the brilliant attorney and the offbeat assignment. As she plays detective, she learns that beneath the Victorian facades of the firm and its partners are simmering caldrons of dark secrets that increasingly blur the line between business and pleasure, and life and death.
As this was already the third book from Jeffery Deaver I read, I already learned to be cautious about everything I was reading, being suspicious about everyone in the story and never believe the real perpetrator of the crime was found when there are twenty or more pages left of the book. To be honest, it little disappointed me that I found out who the real bad guy was somewhere in the second third of the book.
Generally, I find this book a little worse when comparing it to the Coffin Dancer and on a similar quality level as the Maiden’s tomb. It was fast paced from the beginning and caught my interest immediately, however, then it slowed down a bit and too many new suspicious people were coming to the story. They also had too similar names to my taste so I had to from time to time go back to remember who was who. Also, this time it was quite easy for me to separate real suspicious characters from those who couldn’t commit the crime but the main character was still investigating them.
As always, I learned some interesting terms, processes and other things related to criminal investigation and this time also related to law, as Deaver has a really great talent of describing and explaining things related to the story so the reader still feels well informed about what is going on.
I liked this book and it was exciting to read it. My rating is 7/10.
Pinky Kidney 