A New Beginning: The Never Game by Jeffrey Deaver

Many thanks to NetGalley for allowing me to read a copy of this novel in advance.

Arthur Conan Doyle once grew so sick of writing about Sherlock Holmes that he killed him off. The greatest detective in the world accosted his arch enemy Prof Moriarty literally on a cliff edge overhanging Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland and after a furious tussle they both apparently fell to their deaths.

Happily, insofar as we know, Lincoln Rhyme is still alive and well in his New York apartment overlooking Central Park. But his author has decamped from East Coast to West and is focusing on a new character. This has always been a tough gig. Deaver has attempted this before with the character of Kathryn Dance, an expert in kinesics, the study of human movement and gestures, Kathryn never really worked for me.

Does Colter Shaw, the protagonist of The Never Game? Colter is one of the three children of a survivalist family headed by two former university professors brought up and home-schooled in an isolated estate in the Californian wilderness. He is an expert tracker and he makes his living by collecting rewards for finding disappeared people. We are soon told that he is not to be confused with a bounty hunter. The apparent kidnapping of a young female student following an argument with her father sets Colter up against a criminal mastermind of his own. Soon dubbed "The Gamer" this miscreant seems to be recreating with his victims the scenarios involved in an old survivalist-type game where the player is left in a hostile location with a certain set of objects as his/her only means of escape. Set exclusively in California, the plot has all the twists and turns you have come to expect from Deaver.

Unfortunately, I have to say I found Colter unconvincing and unlovable.Home-schooled almost in isolation in the wilderness yet he's completely au fait with modern gadgetry? Ah, but his parents were professors! He knows a massive amount about culture and psychology? Well, they had a library, you see... Sorry Jeff but I ain't buying.

As for his personality... Well... Um... He doesn't really have much of one. At first I thought one of the reveals would be that Colter is autistic he was so much of a blank slate, well it wasn't. Damn. Lincoln may be in a wheelchair but he oozes personality, I especially like his occasional musings on "crips" as he calls himself, his disability, his arrogance and his attempts to get at the whiskey. Entirely absent in Colter.

Don't get me wrong, Deaver is a good writer, the twists and turns of the story made this novel go down quick but I couldn't help missing Lincoln or any other personality come to that. There is only one thing that might be the hook that'll make me pick up the next Colter Shaw book, the family mystery of who killed his father and why.