Lincoln Rhyme

Lincoln Rhyme is a character in a series of books by Jeffery Deaver. He is a retired criminalist who is a quadriplegic due to an accident during one of the crime scenes he was working on, in an underground subway. However, he can still move his left ring finger and has regained his grasping function in his right hand through NFS. He lives in a New York apartment, which overlooks Central Park. On his window sill there is a nest of peregrine falcons. In the 1999 film adaptation of "The Bone Collector", he is portrayed by Denzel Washington.

Character and Background

In all of Deaver's books, Lincoln Rhyme is portrayed as a hot-tempered, scientifically-minded forensic genius with an insatiable appetite for puzzling together the pieces of a crime, often so much so that he may sometimes come across as insensitive and indifferent to anything except evidence. But Deaver's writing often points out the fact that this obsession is possibly all that keeps the quadraplegic ex-detective sane.

Before his accident, Rhyme was married to his first wife, Blaine, and headed his division in the NYPD CSU. The accident rendering him quadraplegic occurred whilst he was running a crime scene underground and a support beam over his head gave way, crashing down onto the fulcrum of Rhyme's fourth cervical vertebra and burying him beneath a pile of rubble. Rhyme was eventually dug out and hospitalized, but the damage was done.

Due to the outspreading toxic discharge of his damaged CNS components, most of Rhyme's spinal cord had been destroyed, leaving him with direct control of only his head, shoulders, and left ring finger, and only a faint feeling of sensation in these areas. Most of Rhyme's autonomic body functions were also lost. Rhyme was placed in rehabilitation for several years, undergoing tracheotomy and continued stimulation of the phrenic nerve to allow him to regain proper use of his respiratory system and breathe independently without the use of a ventilator or stimulator.

When Rhyme's rehabilitation and decommissioning was complete, he was discharged and sent home, but his personal life and health did not improve. Due to mutual frustrations with their marriage, he and his wife divorced, and a while afterwards, Rhyme began to suffer from more serious health problems, such as increasing attacks of autonomic dysreflexia. Thom, his helpful (and persistent) aide, along with several other specialists, was able to care for Rhyme well enough to prevent any lasting damage to Rhyme. Months later. Rhyme began to suffer from a delayed onset of suicidal depression. Being quadraplegic, he could not kill himself without assistance, and a long string of frustrated pleas from doctors and his aide provided no help.

Following the events of the first Lincoln Rhyme thriller, The Bone Collector, Rhyme had been recruited again by the NYPD to run cases in search of dangerous criminals, and had formed a romantic relationship with former NYPD patrolwoman Amelia Sachs. Over the course of the following books, Rhyme gradually lost his depression and resolved to continue, at least for now, in the practice of forensic science; his temporary ally Sonny Li speculated that, in some ways, Rhyme's accident has allowed him to become even better at his job, as Rhyme is now almost totally focused on his intellectual development and can thus focus his attention onto a case to a greater degree than if faced with physical distractions.

Since that time, Rhyme's condition began to improve: first with him considering (but in the end deciding against) an experimental spinal cord regeneration process, and then undergoing intensive electronically-stimulated exercise to attempt to increase his neurotransmitter range, and currently in Deaver's novels, he is considering another experimental surgical process to reattach his spinal cord over his shattered C4 vertebrae.

This did produce some results, as he was revealed in Deaver's novel "The Twelfth Card" to have regained limited control over his right hand, though the motor control and sensation are still currently erratic in the fingers.

Rhyme does seem to have also recovered most of his sense of purpose, partly due to his work and partly due to Amelia Sachs, and though he is almost always short-tempered, sarcastic, and even sometimes obnoxious, Rhyme pushes on with determination. He has stated to several people, such as Kara, that he prefers it when people are harsh to him rather than polite, as he dislikes it when people focus exclusively on his disability and 'wear gloves' around him.

He also possesses a number of personality quirks, such as a dry sense of humor and wit, a penchant for driving around motorized wheelchairs with a brilliant red colour, and a fondness for long draughts of single-malt whiskey.

Partners

* Thom is Lincoln's caregiver, who is the longest serving caregiver as most are driven away by Lincoln's sarcastic abuse.
* Amelia Sachs is Lincoln's protégé and lover.
* Lon Selitto is a detective for NYPD.
* Fred Dellray is a FBI agent who appears in the first few frequently, but slowly becomes a less frequent visitor. He helps Lincoln get his evidence processed quickly, like the IFS. He is an undercover agent and is nicknamed "Chameleon".
* Mel Cooper is the lab technician who analyzes the evidence. He is rather soft-spoken, lives with his Mother, but has a girlfriend, and is a champion ballroom dancer.
* Terry Dobyns is an NYPD psychologist and the first person who spoke to Rhyme after his accident; he has offered Rhyme psychological advice on the perps he is tracking on at least two occasions.
* Kara is a young female magician, who helps Lincoln and the others by offering her advice on magic in "The Vanished Man"; returned to provide information on the symbolism of a tarot card left by the perp in "The Twelfth Card".
* Sonny Li is an undercover cop for China who is after Gui the human smuggler and murderer. He is later killed by Gui.
* Roland Bell is an NYPD detective who specializes in witness protection and calls it SWAT, or "Saving Witnesses' Ass Team".
* Ron Pulaski made his first appearance in The Twelfth Card. Lincoln finds it hard to get rid of the habit of calling him "rookie".
* Parker Kincaid is a disputed documents analyst.
* Kathryn Dance is a kinesics analyst who works for the California Bureau of Investigation. She made her first appearance in The Cold Moon.

Partners In The Movie

*Paulie Selitto
*Amelia Donaghy
*Eddie Ortiz
*Thelma

Novels

# The Bone Collector (1997)
# The Coffin Dancer (1998)
# The Empty Chair (2000)
# The Stone Monkey (2002)
# The Vanished Man (2003)
# The Twelfth Card (2005)
# The Cold Moon (2006)
# The Broken Window (2008)

Movies

# The Bone Collector (1999)