The hero of Jeffery Deaver's thriller The Bone Collector is Lincoln Rhyme, a forensic scientist known to his peers as "the world's foremost criminalist." Rhyme will need all his reason - - and his considerable stock of high - tech tools - - about him to solve this latest brain - twister: a serial killer with method to his madness. In tried and true thriller fashion, the killer's crimes are described in lurid detail, as is the astounding technological equipment with which Rhyme examines the evidence - - everything from an energy - dispersive x - ray unit to a mass spectrometer.