The Twelfth Card

The Twelfth Card is the sixth novel in Jeffery Deaver's Lincoln Rhyme series and is widely regarded within the series as an unconventional entry. The story begins in a Harlem high school library: teenager Geneva is reading microfilm of an 1860s newspaper, the Colored Weekly Illustrated, which recounts the story of her ancestor Charles Singleton. Singleton was born a slave, joined the civil rights movement of the 1860s after gaining freedom, but was later arrested and disgraced in a theft case; to his death he insisted on his innocence and repeatedly hinted in letters that he held a secret that, once spoken, would bring disaster on his family. While she is reading, someone breaks in and attacks Geneva, leaving a tarot card at the scene—the Hanged Man. After the hired killer Thompson Boyd fails for the first time, Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs judge from trace evidence at the scene that he will certainly strike again. The case thus splits into two threads: one is the present need to stop the assassination before another tarot card appears; the other points to the truth buried one hundred and forty years ago between Charles Singleton's conviction and Gallows Hill. As the investigation proceeds, stolen money, a freedman's secret, and Harlem's racial history become entangled, and Lincoln must infer from the gaps between evidence and history who the next victim will be.