The Stone Monkey
The Stone Monkey is a crime novel by American writer Jeffery Deaver. First published in 2002, it is the fourth Deaver novel featuring the quadraplegic detective Lincoln Rhyme. Plot summary As the US Coast Guard moves to intercept a ship off the coast of New York, which had departed from St Petersburg carrying around 30 Chinese illegal immigrants, the leader of the ship, a notorious human smuggler and hitman named Ghost, decides to ignite a bomb, causing the ship to sink, as he escapes himself by means of a life-raft. A group of immigrants escape on a second life-raft, some of whom fall over within meters from the shore. One of them drowns, two are pursued and killed by Ghost, and a shot is fired by Ghost against another. The remaining ten, namely, the Chang and Wu families, who were dissidents and supporters of the 1989 riots in China, run into Chinatown of New York using a stolen van. Ghost meets with a local accomplice, but he drives off by himself, abandoning Ghost. Amelia Sachs, upon racing to the scene, finds a man with a gun-shot wound clinging to the rocks near the shore, and helps to rescue him. The