The Broken Window

I've very much enjoyed this thriller The Broken Window by Jeffery Deaver which was also quite unnerving. The murderer uses extensive databases to seek out and learn about his victims and uses the same databases to find information on the people he frames for the murders. In this computer information age there is a lot of information on people stored for good and potential evil and that is what I found interesting and scary. In this story the murderer enjoys playing "God" as he knows everything about everyone and can manipulate the data to change the information stored about people to their detriment. For example, a "clean" police officer has his record changed to show a positive drug test and is therefore suspended. The issue of identity theft is raised in this story as the murderer steals identities and changes them. The murderer's mistake in this story, after being undetected for years, is to target Lincoln Rhyme's cousin. So Rhyme and his beautiful companion Sachs are on the case. At the end of the book, Deaver directs readers to web sites for more information about privacy e.g. Privacy International www.privacyinternational.org 4 1/2/5