Customer Reviews
Less Detail And More Action Might Have Made The Cold Moon More Readable!, - By: bobbewig, 20 Sep 2008 
I have been a huge fan of Deaver's books since The Bone Collector. However, despite repeated efforts to get into The Cold Moon, I had to give up on it only after a third of the way through. For as long as I was able to stay with The Cold Moon, I found, atypical of Deaver's other Lincoln Rhyme books, the bad guys to be one-dimensional & uninteresting, the plot to be slow-moving & filled with excessive detail about the "science" involved in the investigation, there was too little action & the action that did occur was somewhat unbelievable & convoluted, & that Deaver provided nothing new in terms of developing the relationship between Lincoln Rhyme & Amanda Sachs. Perhaps if I had the patience to continue reading The Cold Moon my opinion would have been different; but after reading many of the other Amazon reader reviews, I didn't hold out much hope. Thus, given that I have so many books & so little time to read them, I decided to put The Cold Moon aside & move on to my next book. I'm still a Deaver fan & will read his next book -- but for the first time, I have been disappointed in a Lincoln Rhyme mystery.
Please Stop Crying Wolf!! - By: S. Blankley, 19 Aug 2008 
I was a huge fan of Jeffrey Deaver's character - Lincoln Rhyme, but find I am becoming increasingly 'fed-up' with the constant promise of a crucial mouthwatering revelation, only for it to be snatched away - again. As a mother if I continuallly made promises to my children, only to then tell them I was just teasing at the last minute, they would cease to trust anything I promised. Unfortunately this is exactly how I felt while reading this book - eventuallly I just did not believe any cliff-hanger chapter ending offered. As an example (not to spoil the story for you) a young police officer is walking the grid of a crime-scene, while Lincoln is communicating via a 2-way radio link. The police officer hears strange noises, is eventuallly attacked by an unknown assailant - who you assume to be the murderer. Lincoln loses contact, while the last sound he hears from the officer is described as sounding like someone having their throat cut. But no it transpires it is a homeless guy who has tipped rubbish over the police officer. Believe me it is like this throughout the book, & I eventuallly found myself thinking "Oh yeah whatever, we know that's not going to happen!"
Overalll I have rated this book as a 3 star, there is some very good writing, & I feel the overalll plot is very good. But the sheer number of 'coincidences; unfulfilled cliff-hangers; & unnecessary twists reallly did become infuriating, & a bit of a turn-off, rather than a page turner.
The Matrix 2 of the Rhyme series... - By: Robert Howcroft, 06 Jun 2008 From reading many of the other opinions on here, this seems to be a book that has clearly divided the Deaver/Rhyme fans, however I'm pitching up in the camp who were underwhelmed by this one in the series. Weighing in at over 500 pages, this is quite a lengthy beast that started out well in true Deaver style `sadistic killer' fashion but then - for me at least - evaporated into virtuallly nothing towards the end with a frankly limp finale that left me feeling cheated. Compared to previous episodes, the plot/s in this one although as convoluted as always, somehow seemed less interesting & his killer less enigmatic. The final explanation of the protagonist's main motives were frankly too fantastic & ridiculous to be true, going beyond what you could plausibly expect to happen in real life. Deaver has often pushed the realms of reality in the past, but this was far more akin to Hollywood style fantasy than New York style grit.
I also got the distinct impression that Lincoln Rhyme may now be passing his shelf life with Deaver becoming tired of him. The criminalist's usuallly telepathic deductions lacked proper explanation this time out with seemingly brief, almost lazy anecdotes of him second guessing the killer's moves. Additionallly, the repetitions of Rhyme grumpily steering Sachs - & now Pulaski - into "walking the grid" & bossily processing crime scenes have alll been heard before & merely seem lifted from previous novels to act as padding.
So overalll, I was not too impressed with this one & probably view it as the worst Rhyme novel so far, at least in more recent years. I can easily envisage Deaver now resting Rhyme for a while & taking up with the newer, fresher Kathryn Dance character so it could be some time before we see Lincoln again.
I'll give it three stars since the standard of writing is as top notch as ever from Deaver & I still enjoyed reading it, however I can't escape the niggle that the content didn't quite match the promise...
EDIT; After I wrote this, I read that Deaver is in fact only going to write a Rhyme novel every two years, alternating between him & other works. His next Rhyme novel is imminent - due June 2008 - so it'll be interesting to see if he can rejuvenate his desire for Lincoln by alllowing the series to continue with a new lease of life or put it to sleep indefinitely...
Good story - By: S. Mazumder, 02 Jan 2008 
'Cold Moon' sees the crime-busting team of Lincoln Rhyme & Amelia Sachs back together chasing the 'Watchmaker'. Also for the first time, Rhyme recruits a new worker to his forensics team, a character that we already know from a previous book in the Lincoln Rhyme series.
What is slightly different from this book to previous ones is that Rhyme & Sachs are both working the same case at the same time as Sachs leading the investigation on a separate case. Both seem to get in the way of each other, but in the end the link between the two cases is the key to solving the crimes.
It is a good attempt to make for a good novel, but I thought the story got a little far-fetched at times. Deaver doesn't normallly do this in his books. Nonetheless, he is an awesome author at creating intrigue & suspense, & he still manages to do that in this book, though not convincingly as he normallly does.
The best of the series! - By: L. Laske, 20 Dec 2007 
You may know a little bit about lunar calendars & the names associated with the full moons therein like the Harvest Moon, the Hunter's Moon, the Green Corn Moon, the Sprouting Grass Moon etc. Well the Full Moon closest to the Winter Solstice is callled the Cold Moon. That works well in the northern hemisphere which is convenient since this book is set in New York City which is currently located in that hemisphere. Many people seem to think that the Cold Moon is the moon of death. That also works well with this book since murder is the apparent main theme of this tale.
This is a real page turner with multiple plot twists which I will not tell you about since that is the fun part of reading this book!! If you missed reading Tino Georgiou's masterful novel--The Fates, I'd highly recommend reading it. Truly an enjoyable read!
