April 13, 2009
In bestseller Deaver's surprise-filled third Kathryn Dance novel (after The Sleeping Doll
), Dance, an agent with the California Bureau of Investigation, gets an eye-opening education in some of the hottest areas of the cyberworld. After an auto accident kills two teens, vicious smears of Travis Brigham, the teen driver deemed responsible but not charged in the accident, appear on the Chilton Report, a popular blog. After one of the accusing bloggers barely survives an assault, Brigham becomes a “person of interest.” Brigham disappears, and attacks, each preceded by a crude roadside cross, spread to other Chilton bloggers. Meanwhile, Dance also looks into a mercy killing at Monterey Bay Hospital that takes an unexpected turn, and Robert Harper, a special prosecutor from the attorney general's office in Sacramento, begins an investigation that will affect her. Deaver's expert and devious plotting makes it a challenge to stay only a couple of steps behind him.
August 31, 2009
Tony Award–winning actress Michele Pawk nicely captures the inner monologues of Deaver's protagonist Kathryn Dance, the California Bureau of Investigation's leading kinesics expert. Dance's remarkable sixth sense concerning the truthfulness of suspects and witnesses becomes a double-edged sword in her social interactions with co-workers and family members, and Pawk's portrayal of the widowed detective's angst on the fledgling romantic front rings especially true. Pawk's rendering of the dialogue proves to be her weak point: the voices of older teen boys, especially Travis Brigham, the young man at the center of the story, continually quiver into higher octaves more suitable to preadolescent males. While the listener never loses touch with the essence of Dance, others in her path come to life with varying degrees of success. A Simon & Schuster hardcover (Reviews, Apr. 13).
May 1, 2009
Kinesics specialist Kathryn Dance's second case (The Sleeping Doll, 2007) gives her more chances to show her special expertise, but to less effect.
Everyone's seen the homemade crosses, often arrayed with flowers, that mark fatal traffic accidents. But the memorials placed along the roads of Monterey, Calif., are different. They don't include the names of the dead, and they list today's or tomorrow's dates, making them less like memorials than like the taunting prophecies so beloved of Lincoln Rhyme's creator (The Broken Window, 2008, etc.). The California Bureau of Investigation is quick to link the first roadside cross to Tammy Foster, a high-school student abducted and locked in the trunk of her car, which was parked on the beach as the tide came in. Soon after, CBI investigator Dance, recalling a one-car accident that left two of Tammy's friends dead, realizes that The Chilton Report, a local blog about to go global, may have unleashed a wave of violence. Blogger James Chilton's online question—whether the road on which high-school student Travis Brigham crashed the car had been adequately maintained—seemed innocuous enough, but the comments that followed, many of them attacks on Travis by fellow students, became increasingly vitriolic. Did the flame war erupt from cyberspace into the old-fashioned kind of space? A series of considerably more physical attacks, first against another student, then directed more generally at contributors to The Chilton Report, raises the stakes. Yet Dance seems mostly ineffectual, maybe due to the distractions of the obligatory turf wars and of her mother's arrest for euthanizing a hopelessly wounded patient in the hospital where she works as a nurse. Deaver's trademark plot twists are more numerous but less surprising than usual, with most of the alleged thunderclaps muffled.
After 15 years as the master magician of the thriller, Deaver seems to be opting for a less demanding formula.
(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)
May 1, 2009
Deaver brings back body-language expert Kathryn Dance ("The Sleeping Doll") in a clever and twisted tale that explores the world of the Internet and the premise that words can be more powerful than any weapon. A roadside remembrance cross is found with the next day's date. When that day arrives, someone almost dies near the spot. As more memorials appear that seem to predict future deaths, Dance must push her talents to the limit; this killer lives in an online world and believes that his imaginary life is his real one. And how does an expert on human interaction deal with an avatar from a fake realm? The web sites mentioned throughout the book are actual live links and add to the fun. Though a couple of subplots get glossed over, the main story resonates. Dance is another exciting series character, and though this series has a ways to go before it achieves the devotion accorded Deaver's Rhyme/Sachs series, it has unlimited potential. Don't miss this one. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 2/15/09.]Jeff Ayers, Seattle P.L.
Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
May 1, 2009
Deaver is bound to slip up sometime. But not this time. This novel, which follows on the heels of Sleeping Doll (2007), again stars California Bureau of Investigation agent Kathryn Dance and, like its predecessor, is tightly constructed with a suspenseful story and plenty of plot twists. Deaver, perhaps more than any other crime writer, is able to fool even the most experienced readers with his right-angle turns, and this story of a serial killer who uses social networks to find his prey is full of them. Deavers investigators are very good at their jobs, and in order to fool them (and us), he must be exceedingly clever, as well as just a little bit deceitful (having characters say things that turn out not to be true, for example, even thoughthey believed the things when they said them). So far Deaver has avoided accidentally telegraphing a plot twist in advance, but someday, surely, hell out-clever himself. Or maybe he wont. This is an excellent entry in what promises to be a series as popular as the authors Lincoln Rhyme novels.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)