Empty chair. Jeffrey Deaver. 2000.

A quadriplegic since a beam crushed his spinal cord years ago, Lincoln Rhyme is desperate to improve his condition and goes to the University of North Carolina Medical Center for high-risk experimental surgery. But he and Sachs (his protege)  have hardly settled in when the local authorities come calling. In a twenty-four hour period, the sleepy southern outpost of,Tanner’s Corner has seen a local teen murdered and two young women abducted.and Rhyme and Sachsmare the best chance to find the girls alive. 

The prime suspect is a strange teenaged truant known as the Insect Boy, so nicknamed for his disturbing obsession with bugs. Rhyme agrees to find the boy while awaiting his operation. Rhyme’s unsurpassed analytical skills  and stellar forensic experience, combined with Sachs’s exceptional detective legwork, soon snare he perp. But even Rhyme can’t anticipate that Sachs will disagree with his crime analysis and hat her vehemence  will put her in the swampland, harbouring the very suspect whom Rhyme considers a ruthless killer. So ensues Rhyme’s greatest challenge - facing the criminalist whom he has taught everything he knows in a battle of wits, forensics and intuition. And in this adversary, Rhyme also faces his best friend and soul mate.