I haven't done a book review in awhile so I figured now would be a good time to do one. This time I'm taking a look at Jeffrey Deaver's most recent paperback release, called "The Sleeping Doll". Deaver is one of my favorite authors and his characters Lincold Rhyme and Amelia Sachs are two of my favorites of all times. That said, whenever Deaver creates a new character I get a bit anxious wondering if he can capture the same degree of complexity that he has in those two.
I got a bit of a taste of Kathryn Dance in one of his previous novels (The Cold Moon) and frankly was really excited about reading this book. The Sleeping Doll plays off of my love for communication arts in that the heroine is a kinesics expert. What is kinesics? It is the ability to read someone based on their body language. Kathryn Dance is n interrogator who uses her kinesic reading skills along with her knowledge of paralanguage (voice inflection, tone, attitudinal shifts, etc.) to basically serve as a human lie detector.
In this book, a Charles Manson wannabe escapes from prison and manages to elude Dance using his abilities of manipulation and control. He is the perfect mirror of Dance in that he too can read people and uses this skill to control his victims.
The book is extremely fast paced, yet often cerebral. I would say it is a notch below the Lincoln Rhyme novels in it's complexities, yet still makes my mind race with thoughts of learning even a smidge of the skills Dance displays. Sadly, the parts of the book that deal with her skill sets are few and far between, which is a bit disappointing. It kinda reminds of that television show Numb3rs which is about a math genius that helps his FBI brother solve crimes. The numbers part is often secondary to the actual episode. It was the same for me in this book. That's however is not to say that the book was bad, it wasn't. It was a very good book and quite enjoyable, just not on the same plain as what my expectations were.
The criminal in this book is brilliant, though not flashy like many of Deaver's villians. I liked that quite a bit because it brought a bit more realism to the story. The Bone Collector and the The Conjuerer were great criminals in his other books, but they brought about a sort of otherworldly quality, something you would see in a comic book, not a newspaper. Daniel Pell, the killer in the Sleeping Doll, was pure evil, nothing more.
The book centers on a murder (ala Charles Manson) that occurred many years before. The only person in the house that survived was a girl dubbed the Sleeping Doll, due to the fact that she had survived the attacks because she was asleep in a pile of stuffed animals and dolls, overlooked by the killers as they were murdering her family. The perpetrator of the killings has escaped from prison and it is up to Dance and her team to figure out why he is sticking around Monterey and not fleeing. He leads her on a chase, seemingly one step ahead of her at all times. Occasionally it will seem as if he is putting distance between them, but then Dance figures out his plans and manages to foil one of his many objectives.
The book is good, it moves along and is a story well told. I have one bone to pick however. Deaver loves twists, and this story has those. One in particular is the basis of the whole story and he does an excellent job hiding this untl the very end. There is another one, however that grinds my nerves. I won't say what it was, but I didn't feel it was necessary and while it deals with Dance and her relationship with another character, it is extremely clunky and doesn't fit well in the story. Furthermore it serves no real purpose other than to drag a couple more chapters out of the book, something it doesn't necessarily need.
I would recommend The Sleeping Doll for anyone who likes crime dramas. It was a good book with great characters and excellent pace. I was left wanting to read more about Kathryn Dance, which is a good thing in my opinion. If I had to rate it, I would say the Sleeping Doll rates a solid 4 out of 5.
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