The Sleeping Doll

Daniel Pell, convicted of multiple brutal murders, breaks out of jail and escapes into the Monterey Peninsula landscape. Special Agent Kathryn Dance, a methodical investigator and skilled interrogator, is assigned to lead the case. Pell continually frustrates his pursuers by doing the unexpected, staying close to his escape point and leaving a trail of corpses. Narrator Anne Twomey provides a deliberate narration that matches the tempo of the prolonged and bloody investigation. Twomey is particularly skilled at vocalizing emotion--ranging from the arrogance of Pell to the terror of his victims. There are lots of twists as this story races to a surprising conclusion. T.J.M. (c) AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine

April 2, 2007
Kathryn Dance, an investigator with the California Bureau of Investigation, returns from Deaver's The Cold Moon
(where she was a secondary) in this post–prison break pulse-pounder. Dance is the lead cop handling the escape of psychopathic killer Daniel Pell, dubbed "Son of Manson" by the press for his "family" of young runaways and his most horrendous crime, the murders of computer engineer William Croyton, Croyton's wife and two of their three children. The only child left alive, nine-year-old Theresa, is known as the Sleeping Doll. Pell, charismatic and diabolically intelligent, continually eludes capture, but Dance, a specialist in interrogation and kinesics (or body language), is never more than a few suspenseful minutes behind. Dance is nicely detailed, and procedural scenes where she uses somatic cues to ferret out liars are fascinating. The book sags in its long middle, but toward the end Deaver digs into his bottomless bag of unexpected twists and turns, keeping readers wide-eyed with surprise, and leaving them looking forward to more of the perspicacious Dance.