The Never Game

by Jeffery Deaver
399 pgs  (Colter Shaw series #1)

The Never Game kicks off a new series for Jeffery Deaver, one without any connection to his Lincoln Rhyme series. Colter Shaw is a "reward seeker," someone who investigates missing-persons cases whenever a reward is offered. He's a brilliant man, who really doesn't even need the reward money to survive, and he uses his keen intellect and deductive skills to search for the missing child or person. More often than not he's successful and able to rescue the missing person before law enforcement is able to locate the person themselves.

When a $10,000 reward is offered by the father of a college student named Sophie Mulliner, who goes missing in Silicon Valley, Colter travels there to see if he's able to find her. He's quickly able to locate and save Sophie, but soon two other people go missing as well, and Colter discovers that all three kidnappings are tied to a video game called The Whispering Man, in which players find themselves dumped in inhospitable settings with five random objects they must use to try to survive and escape. Colter recognizes the fact that the three kidnappings resemble the first three levels of the game, and using the next levels as clues, tries to get ahead of the kidnapper and catch him before someone else disappears

Deaver has created a great new character to base this new series on. With his genius-level intelligence and his unique upbringing by a survivalist father, Colter Shaw is a character I'm looking forward to learning more about, and finding out what Deaver has planned for him next.

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆