The Brooken Window

[The Brooken Window]

DEAVER, Jeffery

Year:

2008

Type:

Fiction

Public:

Generic

Tags:

Literature - Thriller

Publisher:

Hodder & Stoughton

Year of publication:

2008

Pages:

432

Moral assessment:

Type: Literature

Nothing inappropriate.

Some morally inappropriate content.

Contains significant sections contrary to faith or morals.

Contains some lurid passages, or presents a general ideological framework that could confuse those without much Christian formation.

Contains several lurid passages, or presents an ideological framework that is contrary or foreign to Christian values.

Explicitly contradicts Catholic faith or morals, or is directed against the Church and its institutions.

Literary quality:

Recommendable:

Transmits values:

Sexual content:

Violent content:

Vulgar or obscene language:

Ideas that contradict Church teaching:

The rating of the different categories comes from the opinion of Delibris' collaborators

The criminologist is Lincoln Rhyme, and his partner is Inspector Amelia Sachs. The main antagonist is a criminal who, by working with databases, can manipulate them and get away with his crimes. The underlying theme is the power of data freely available online, which anyone can collect to know where, how, and with whom someone is at any given moment.

When Rhyme’s cousin is accused of murdering a woman, Lincoln realizes something doesn't add up in the evidence—because not even the most careless killer would leave so many traces behind. With the help of Detective Sachs, he searches for the true culprit, who has likely committed more crimes and led to the conviction of innocent people.

Jeffery Deaver explores the nightmarish world that the internet can lead to. In addition to being a thrilling and entertaining novel, it also portrays the characters’ psychology very well.

Jeffery Deaver (pseudonym of Glen Ellyn, 1950) is an American crime novelist. He is especially successful for his suspense series featuring Rhyme, a quadriplegic detective. Some of his works have been adapted into films and television.

Author: Angeles Labrada, Spain

Update on: Apr 2025

Other review

Moral Assessment:

A psychotic killer with access to the country’s biggest data miner—Strategic Systems Datacorp—is using detailed information to work his way into the lives of victims, rape, rob, and kill them, and then blame unsuspecting innocents for the crimes. The killer’s voluminous knowledge of the victims and his ability to plant damning evidence mean that even the most vocal protests of innocence go ignored by the police and juries.

Rhyme, Amelia Sachs, and the cast of the previous Rhyme books find themselves up against their most insidious villain, a man obsessed with collecting information about our lives to make the ultimate trophy: human lives themselves, which he sees as mere streams of data. This is a man proficient with razors and guns, but whose most dangerous weapon is information, which he wields with ruthless precision against those he targets on a whim, and against those who try to stop him.

The Broken Window is classic Deaver fare: Taking place over three frantic days, the novel features dozens of twists and turns, fascinating, highly researched details—about identity theft, data mining, and threats to privacy, as well as forensic science—and, of course, offers the typical multiple surprise endings the author is known for crafting. It may not be the most complex or exciting Deaver, but it is free of the unnecessary lurid references found in some of his novels. There is, though, the suggestion of the final showdown with the killer who appeared in The Cold Moon (2006) and may turn out to be Rhyme’s "Professor Moriarty."

S.H. (2009).