Jeffery Deaver – The Final Twist – Comment.

 

Came across this little gem while travelling across town on a suburban bus, situated on an obscure table at the back of an old post office. The price was in my budget, ($5.00) so purchased the novel and put it down only once in a 24-hour period. Reading this Deaver thriller was certainly worth the time and certainly underpriced for the experience.  

Probably known to most who read this genre, Deaver is better known for his detective Lincoln Rhyme thrillers, which include the well-known The Bone Collector, later made into a feature film starring the charismatic Densel Washington. Personally, I found the novel better than the film but of course there is no accountability for taste.  

There was no doubt that I would like this novel when opening it up for the first time and reading the epigraph: 

For the powerful, crimes are those that others commit. 

        - Noam Chomsky 

The Final Twist is about one man’s battle against the powerful American Corporation: revealing their underhanded dealings at the possible expense of one’s own life.  

As a died in the wool anti-authoritarian individual, one could say this novel was written entirely for me. The David and Goliath theme in literature and film is used a lot, however, a billion-dollar company finding a loophole in the United States Constitution to run the country and fighting to prevent such a thing makes for some exciting reading.  

Our protagonist is Colter Shaw. He is a survivalist/private detective/solider/seeker of rewards. Shaw’s clients can be the wealthy seeking for lost chattels to the underprivileged looking for a missing spouse or family member. His reward can be huge or meagre depending on the job. In The Final Twist, Shaw is taking up the mission that his dead father began, and that is finding a thing, document or recording that will take this evil corporation down. As readers, we do not find out what this is until much later in the tale.  

Deaver is in the top five crime/thriller writers in the US. These include Lee Child, James Patterson, Stephen King, and Harlon Coben. All these writers are masters of the ‘twist’ including Jeffery Deaver. In The Final Twist, in every short chapter, the reader believes the action is going one way, when it goes in an unexpected direction at the end.  

This is clever and very entertaining. 

The Final Twist is a near perfect novel to read on a long flight across land and sea. Before you know it, looking up, you will have arrived at your destination.