The Best American Noir of the Century

Jeffery Deaver (1950-) was born outside Chicago and received a journalism degree from the University of Missouri, becoming a newspaperman, then received a law degree from Fordham University, practicing law for several years. A poet, he wrote his own songs and performed them across the country.

One of the most prominent and consistently excellent suspense writers in the world, Deaver is the author of twenty-three novels and two short story collections. He has been translated into twenty-five languages and is a perennial bestseller in America and elsewhere. Among his many honors are six nominations for Edgar Allan Poe Awards (twice for Best Paperback Original, four times for Best Short Story); three Ellery Queen Readers’ Awards for Best Short Story of the Year; the 2001 W. H. Smith Thumping Good Read Award for The Empty Chair; and the 2004 Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award from the British Crime Writers’ Association for Garden of Beasts. In 2009 he was the guest editor of The Best American Mystery Stories of the Year. He has written about a dozen standalone novels, but is most famous for his series about Lincoln Rhyme, the brilliant quadriplegic detective who made his debut in

The Bone Collector (1997), which was filmed by Universal in 1999 and starred Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie. Other Rhyme novels are The Coffin Dancer (1998), The Empty Chair (2000), The Stone Monkey (2002), The Vanished Man

(2003), The Twelfth Card (2005), The Cold Moon (2006), and The Broken Window (2008). His nonseries novel A Maidens Grave (1995) was adapted for an HBO movie titled

Dead Silence (1997) and starred James Garner and Marlee Matlin.

“The Weekender” was first published in the December 1996 issue of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; it was selected for The Best American Mystery Stories 1997.

I looked in the rearview mirror and didn’t see any lights, but I knew they were after us and it was only a matter of time till I’d see the cops. Toth started to talk, but I told him to shut up and got the Buick up to eighty. The road was empty, nothing but pine trees for miles around.

“Oh brother,” Toth muttered. I felt his eyes on me, but I didn’t even want to look at him, I was so mad.

They were never easy, drugstores.

Because, just watch sometime, when cops make their rounds they cruise drugstores more often than anyplace else. Because of the prescription drugs.

You’d think they’d stake out convenience stores. But those’re a joke, and with the closed-circuit TV you’re going to get your picture took, you just are. So nobody who knows the business, I mean really knows it, hits them. And banks, forget banks. Even ATMs. I mean, how much can you clear? Three, four hundred tops? And around here the Fast Cash button gives you twenty bucks. Which tells you something. So why even bother?