Kate (Brooke Lyons) analyses the data, and keeps the tech running along with Claire (Roslyn Ruff), Lincoln’s caregiver, who turns pages too fast. Except in Central Park of course, where it’s most needed on the show. Everything in the city is wired, we don’t think it as we walk past it, but cameras are everywhere and every move is captured on some kind of security cam which are all apparently tied into Lincoln Rhyme’s cable box. He has an immersive computer monitor system so tied in to the Ethernet he is almost AI. When we next see him, he is a step away from Tron. The establishing scenes of the pilot show the incident which left the forensic criminologist paraplegic in the aftermath of one of the Bone Collector’s murderous scenarios.

There is a lot of technology in the series. Rhyme gleefully reminds the tech savvy youngster he’s gotten crushed by an OP. We first see Lincoln playing an online video game with an unseen teenager. With a name like that how could he be? Asked if he wants to be a great detective by a veteran trainer, he says “I’m already a great detective, I want to be the best.” This doesn’t just go for his criminal opponents. He’s not a modest man, this Lincoln Rhyme. NBC is taking a chance on drawing from the other books and their flawed hero. Phillip Noyce directed a film version in 1999 but, in spite of being the only film pairing of box office megastars Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie, it didn’t do well. The series is based on the novel The Bone Collector by Jeffery Deaver. Rhyme gets coaxed out of retirement when NYPD officer Amelia Sachs stumbles across an underground crime scene very reminiscent of the original, uncaught killer, which she keeps safe, uncorrupted and ready for investigation. Lincoln Rhymes was rendered quadriplegic trying to save a victim in the elaborate murder spree of a serial killer who calls himself The Bone Collector. His keen sense of sleuthing and desire for revenge keep his spirit high in spite of his awkward social skills. NBC’s Lincoln Rhyme: Hunt for the Bone Collector is a standard issue police procedural with a twist: the lead detective is brilliant and broken, but only physically.

The bone collector book review