The Steel Kiss

In Deaver's 12th Lincoln Rhyme novel (after The Skin Collector), NYPD officer Amelia Sachs tracks a sick and twisted domestic terrorist with a grudge against capitalism. Vernon Griffith, the People's Guardian, has stolen a long list of products installed with a DataWise5000 smart controller and, using a Wi-Fi remote and cloud technology, triggers products to malfunction and thus maim or kill victims—stairs on an escalator give way, a microwave explodes, a transmission disengages, a circuit box electrocutes, a band saw blade loosens, a stove seeps gas, and a baby monitor shocks a child. After much methodical and ingenious sleuthing, Sachs and her mentor, the paraplegic criminologist Lincoln Rhyme, follow a circuitous route of evidence across Manhattan until they finally identify the killer and the rationale behind the accidents. But they lose his trail.