The Sleeping Doll [Paperback]

In this, the first of a new series, Deaver brings back Californian Special Agent Kathryn Dance - a kinesics expert (basically she's a walking lie detector and expert in body language) - who had a cameo in his last Lincoln Rhyme novel 'The Cold Moon'

A murderous cult leader named Daniel Pell escapes from prison after years inside and the majority of this book explores his motivations and actions and the efforts of the law enforcement agencies (with Dance to the fore) to re-apprehend him.

Dance plays the Lincoln Rhyme role here, attempting to out-think Pell and predict what he'll do next.

She does this by gaining insights into his psychology from a series of interviews with those who've had previous contact with him. They include three female members of the cult he led before his incarceration and the young girl he overlooked when murdering a moneyed family in their home: the `Sleeping Doll' of the title.

Without wishing to give anything of the subsequent plot away, Deaver challenges your perceptions by turning situation after situation on its head with some skilful (and sometimes not so skilful) misdirection.

Jeff's stock-in-trade is the outrageous twist, and he's capable of delivering these with more aplomb than anyone else operating in the crime thriller field. And his characterisation is usually way above average too.

But some of his famous twists are a bit laboured here. If, like me, you've read everything he's written in both the shorter and longer formats, you'll find some of them a bit obvious. Which doesn't mean to say you still won't admire the way he pulls them off.

Another negative is that although Kathryn Dance emerges as a fully-formed character, she's just not very interesting, and Jeff struggles to breathe life into her. Her particular schtick, although potentially fascinating, doesn't seem 100% credible either, and on the whole she pales in comparison when placed next to his greatest creation, the irascible genius Lincoln Rhyme.

At the book's closure he acknowledges the sources that formed his background reading into Dance's area of expertise. And although the whole body language thing seems a bit unconvincing, he skilfully weaves his research into the narrative with nary a lapse into psychobabble.

And full marks to the writer for trying to create a new type of investigator here; you can't accuse him of lacking ambition!

In summary, despite some tedious moments and the occasional meandering passage, this is solid enough fare with something for both old fans and neophytes alike.

I am ambivalent about this first book in the Kathryn Dance series, similar to how I felt about its sequel. In this she is on the trail of escaped prisoner Daniel Pell, a murderer who seems able to brainwash people into helping him.

While the concepts of the two main characters are really interesting, Dance as the kinesics (body-language) expert and Pell as the mind-controlling evil-doer, the plot and the writing style just fail to bear the weight.

Unlike a traditional mystery story, there's no opening for the reader to work things out - every twist comes completely out of the blue, and I found that to be really frustrating. Deaver also has a habit of ending chapters on suggestive cliff-hangers, only to change direction immediately after the break, completely ruining the suspense he has built up.

The narration is opinionated, which seems very strange presentation. If it was aligned with a character, as many other authors do, then this style would make sense but presented as the opinion of a faceless third person narrative it is jarring and rips focus away from the story.

Finally it is too complicated - there's more going on than is needed to tell the story, and particularly at the end where Deaver throws in some unexpected and ultimately unnecessary twists that just cause it to feel dragged out. I'm all for tying up loose ends but these ends weren't even there up to this point.

Overall I probably shouldn't have bothered after my experience reading the sequel. I can only hope that Deaver's attempt at a James Bond novel later this year turns out more satisfactorily.

I too was disappointed with this. I'm a great fan of the Lincoln Rhyme books and was really looking forward to this. Unfortunately, the characters were not that engaging and the twists, normally a key element in the Rhyme novels and one of his greatest specialities, could either be seen coming from a mile of or just seemed shoe horned into the story for the sake of adding more twists. I also thought the book dragged on for a good 50 or so too many pages.