It kept my interest. It’s a good escape. I enjoyed watching smart, talented people. I liked the relationship development.

STORY BRIEF:
Lincoln is a modern day Sherlock-Holmes-type police detective in New York City. He is an expert with collecting and analyzing evidence. He can tell where someone has been by the dirt on their clothes. He was in charge of forensic investigations until he was injured by a falling roof beam, hitting his neck. Now a quadriplegic, he can only move his neck, head, and one finger. He has not worked for a few years.

A serial killer, obsessed with bones, kidnaps two people, buries one of them near a railroad track with a hand sticking out of the dirt, and then calls in the location to the cops. Amelia is a nearby patrol cop assigned to search the area. She climbs down a dirt hill rather than use the installed ladder. She stops a coming train. She stops traffic. All this to preserve the crime scene. Lon is a detective who used to work with Lincoln. Although Lincoln is retired, Lon asks for Lincoln’s help. Lincoln is reluctant until he sees the report showing clues left by the killer: a pile of asbestos, an iron bolt, and two pieces of paper with 3:30 and 823 printed on them. From these Lincoln realizes where the next victim may be. He calls Lon and agrees to work on the case, but he wants Amelia working with him. He wants her in charge of collecting evidence at the crime scenes. He likes her instincts about preserving the crime scene. The killer continues to grab victims, set them up for death, and leave clues.

REVIEWER’S OPINION:
This is a well done crime suspense thriller. I enjoyed and was impressed with Lincoln’s amazing evidence analysis, deduction, and intuition. I enjoyed the developing relationship with Amelia. I liked her abilities, smarts, and her story as well. The ending is a feel good ending. For a while I had some disbelief about a serial killer purposely leaving clues for the police. Each set of clues was about how and when he would kill the next victim. This seemed a bit contrived. It felt like a scavenger hunt. But by the end of the book, it made sense. So try not to question the believability, just go with. I doubt this kind of thing would happen in real life, but it’s an entertaining story. (No stupidity.) There are some gruesome scenes which might bother some, for example, rats eating someone alive who is tied up and cut open.

This was made into a movie. I think I saw it, but I forget how I felt about it.tt

DATA:
Story length: 416 pages. Swearing language: strong, including religious swear words. Sexual content: none. Setting: current day New York City, NY. Copyright: 1997. Genre: crime suspense thriller. Ending: feel good and smiling

I read this some time ago. And before the movie with similar name with I believe started Denzel. It was intriguing, frightening too, and could be a sort of a trigger to some.
Deaver's style is a mind, throat grabber when he deals with touching a dark side. Don't overlook him if you're just "thinkin' on" pickin a book he's penned.--P/

I read a Lincoln Rhyme book a while ago, so thought I would start at the beginning of the series. Although I saw the film ages ago, that did not spoil the book at all - excellent character development, massive knowledge and detail of the forensic process, and expertly plotted. Brilliant!

When a police officer finds a dead body buried, the NYPD goes to Ex-criminologist Lincoln Rhyme for help on who has been killing people and taking their bones. Will they find the killer in time before he strikes again? Read on and find out for yourself.

This was a pretty good police thriller that has a movie adaptation made of it too. If you like thrillers, be sure to check this book out at your local library and wherever books are sold.

Scary and suspenseful. If you saw the movie, disregard it and read the book which is SO much better. This is one I recommend to all of my friends!

L’osso è il nucleo ultimo di un essere umano. Non si altera, non inganna, non cede.
Una volta che la facciata della carne, i difetti delle razze inferiori e del sesso debole, viene bruciata o bollita, noi, noi tutti, siamo nobile osso.
Le ossa non mentono. Le ossa sono immortali.

Questo libro è stato scritto nel 1997, cioè ben 23 anni fa, ma non è invecchiato di un giorno!
O meglio, è invecchiato benissimo!
Merito di una scrittura accurata, ma fluida. Merito dei due protagonisti, veramente straordinari, delineati accuratamente, che restano vividi per tutta la lettura.
Si è vero, in alcuni punti mi è sembrato di essere catapultata in situazioni “all’americana” leggermente bizzarre e alquanto inverosimili... ma che colpi di scena, che capacità di far concentrare il lettore su dettagli all’apparenza insignificanti!
Questo libro mi ha rapita!
Non vedo l’ora di leggere i restati volumi!

Unabridged audio.

The book and movie aren't TOO far apart here, but enough. The care giver at home, the relationship and how it develops etc.

The story of a man ready to "cash-in his chips" and the reason he finds to keep going is well done, and a bit better than it's sequels. I enjoyed this and I'm not really a fan of mysteries. It's worth a look.

I have owned this book since 2012 and never cracked it open. Since reading Memory Man, I felt like reading another hard-boiled police procedural and chose this. I am now in the process of reading The Coffin Dancer and am contemplating buying the entire series. The Bone Collector was just that good!

If you like or have an interest in a lot of technical information walking crime scenes, forensic science, the early history of New York City or even just a really good mystery, then I really think you will like this book. Throw in a burgeoning relationship (maybe), throw out your notion of Denzel Washington as Lincoln Rhyme and dive in. I wonder just how many readers figured out who was doing it...I sure was thrown for a loop and I sure do love that fact. I hate reading a book, thinking I knew who did it and find that I am right. I love to be surprised and this book did it for me. It sure had my heart pounding towards the end.

The first half or more I really disliked the protagonists Lincoln and Amelia, however, I understood them which allowed me to keep reading without too much prodding, the last half brings in another character I didn't like very much. I soon came to understand him too and I wonder if we will see more of The Chameleon in further books?

It may be cliché or trite of me to say, but this was a heck of a page-turner that kept me from my sleep and kept me at the edge of my chair, biting my nails down to the quick while turning pages as quickly as I could! LOL!

* If you do not want to read about euthanasia or about anyone contemplating euthanasia-then take a pass on this book.

I figured it out. I don't want to read about unrealistically extraordinary people. I want to read about ordinary people doing realistically extraordinary things.

It starts out promising, impressive feats of deduction and lots of cop-like pizzazz, but quickly settles in to being that and little else. It's lots of Lincoln Rhyme ordering people to "Do a scale count and medulla pigmentation comparison" and "Check for cellular compression" and "Get a polarized shot of the cellophane." And that's not even consistent. This brilliant criminalist sends a whole bunch of guys around the city buying veal shanks out of their own pockets to make a comparison, but sets an unusual knot aside for later like it's not important? It doesn't read like the author thought up a clever crime story and set about having his hero solve it. Rather, it reads like the author gathered together every high-hat forensic analytic test and piece of lab equipment known to man and then cobbled together a series of events to include each and every one of them. Being this impressed by all this amazing crap gets tiresome.

I'm going to make a confession now, to something perhaps horrible. This expert crime solver thing reminds me of Sherlock Holmes, and perhaps this is blasphemous for a lover of detective and mystery novels, but - gasp! - I never liked him all that much. He was so far above everyone and made so many deductions that were impossibly cerebral (and was so damned arrogant about it too) that I couldn't connect with Holmes or the solution of the crime. I didn't participate, didn't try to figure it out myself; I just read about two geniuses, one good and one evil, pitted against each other, with the force of good winning in a way poor little uneducated and stupid me could never hope to identify with.

Same thing here. Pah.

And then there's the unbelievability. Lincoln Rhyme has amassed three or four fancy college degrees, risen to the top of NYPD and solved thousands of cases, created a vast database of technical stuff like types of dirt and paint chips and tires, given himself a complete self-education about the history of all of the botanical, chemical, geological, zoological, engineering, and cultural aspects of New York City, written a couple of books, and spent the last three years learning how be a C-4 CSI patient, all before the age of, what, forty? (I know. I cannot suspend my disbelief enough to buy the entire New York City Police Department kowtowing to one retired criminalist and filling his bedroom with every million-dollar piece of equipment in existence and every staff member he asks for so he can single-handedly solve one kidnapping/murder, but I readily buy griffins and wizards and prophecies of The One. Yes, it is funny.) Pah again.

Lincoln Rhyme seems to be the only character who is at all developed, but I have to wonder how realistic he is, given the idiocy that was JoJo Moyes' Me Before You. The supporting cast of captains and detectives and deputy commanders and whatever are interchangeable. Then we have the oh-so-clichéd saucy-and-obviously-gay personal assistant/nurse (so gay, apparently, that they made him a woman played by Queen Latifah in the movie) and the undiscovered-genius-and-sultry-beauty (a failed model, even! I am so freaking tired of the women in stories always being devastatingly beautiful) obviously-soon-to-be protégé/love interest. Pah the third.

DNF-ing at 36%.

I do like the references to Edward Hopper's Nighthawks. Not sure what it has to do with the story, and it doesn't necessarily have to have anything to do with it, but that's one of my favorite paintings. I just found it online and spent fifteen minutes or so immersed in it yet again, so that was nice.

Really detailed investigative techniques and lots of gore. I'll read more of this series and see how I feel!

Mnogo, mnogo bolje od filma.
Mnogo paznje posveceno detaljima, pristojno uradjeni karakteri i odlicna jeziva atmosfera.

The book was very entertaining, though not at first I considered not finishing the book. Even if it didn’t sound appealing much at first, don’t give up. Please pay attention that there’s an appendix at the end and make sure to check it out while reading. Lots of abbreviations in the book, it affected my reading experience since many times I had no clue what they’re talking about. I couldn’t guess the killer. Overall an enjoyable quick read, the book is over 500 pages but I flew through it!