The Sleeping Doll: A Novel (Kathryn Dance, No 1) by Jeffery Deaver
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Book Reviews of The Sleeping Doll: A Novel (Kathryn Dance, No 1)
Book Review: Full of great characters, evil villians, and a strange twist at the end
Summary: 4 Stars
THE SLEEPING DOLL, by Jeffrey Deaver, is the first book to feature Kathryn Dance. Dance, a kinesics (body language) expert with the California Bureau of Investigation is put in charge of the manhunt when the murderous Daniel "Son of Manson" Pell escapes from prison. Eight years ago, Pell murdered the founder of a large computer company and his family. He left one victim alive, a young girl who later became known as the "Sleeping Doll." Pell was dubbed the "Son of Manson" because he had a group of three women lving with him at a cult-like compound.
Pell is a master of control, and some of the best parts of the book are when Deaver follows Pell and his actions in drawing another young woman named Jennie Martson into his web. Pell and Jennie are constantly one step ahead of the police. Dance, however, is not going to give in. She enlists the help of Pell's three former girlfriends and tries to figure out why Pell is still in the area. Unlike many books of this nature, the cops aren't clueless. Dance and pals make many key discoveries and just miss Pell several times.
The Good: Deaver excels at characterization. Dance is a widow with two kids weary of her dating again. Pell is a controlling, manipulative killer. The team working with Dance are all well thought out and good characters. The plot is full of twists and turns, and while it might be a bit long, it is never boring.
The Not So Good: The sleeping doll plays only a small part in the book. One of the twists at the end comes out of left field and took away from the impact of the rest of the novel.
While I've never been able to get too enthused about Deaver's Rhyme and Sachs novels, I really enjoyed his other books like Garden of Beasts and The Bodies Left Behind. The Sleeping Doll is no exception. I can't wait for the next book featuring Dance, Roadside Crosses, which comes out in a week or two.
Book Review: More twists from Deaver
Summary: 4 Stars
Charles Manson remains a major villain in modern mythology. Unlike other legendary evils, however (such as Dracula), Manson remains almost unused in fiction. Perhaps it's because he's real and still alive. Maybe his acts begin to pale compared to more recent killers. Even with Jeffrey Deaver, Manson is not really a character, but he is the template for the nasty Daniel Pell, also known as the "Son of Manson".
As Deaver's novel The Sleeping Doll begins, Pell is serving a life sentence for the murder of a well-to-do family, though one member did survive, a child who was overlooked by Pell and his accomplice (and got the nickname that is the book title). Pell, however, has orchestrated an escape with the assistance of the pathetic Jennie Marston, one of those unbalanced women who falls for convicts (I suppose female convicts have their share of adorers too, but you don't hear as much about them).
Leading the chase to get Pell is Kathryn Dance, an agent of the California Bureau of Investigation, and most of the book is a cat-and-mouse game between the two. The brilliance of the book is the way Dance and Pell are almost mirror images of each other, both masters of understanding human behavior. For Pell, this gives him a charisma that gave him his own Manson-like family; for Dance, however, her skills are a way of anticipating the acts of criminals. For the great manipulator Pell, Dance is a real threat.
Deaver is adept at suspense and action in addition to the well-placed plot twist. The Sleeping Doll is typical Deaver fare, which is generally a good thing, but in this case is marred slightly by a twist or two too many. Overall, though, this is an entertaining and fast read which will please both fans of Deaver and thriller readers in general.
Book Review: Deaver goes to the left coast
Summary: 4 Stars
Jeffery Deaver's "The Sleeping Doll" takes us far away from the New York of Lincoln Rhyme (although he has a cameo) to the Central California coast. Featuring Kathryn Dance (she turned up in the Rhyme novel "The Cold Moon"), who's an expert at kinesics (body language)--at one point, she's referred to as the "human lie detector"--Deaver takes us far from Rhyme's forensics to a more intuitive branch of the science of deduction.
When convicted murderer Daniel Pell (a Charles Manson enthusiast) is brought to her for questioning about another murder, Dance quickly figures out what's going on, but Pell escapes, and the rest of the book's a manhunt for him. Key to the tale is Theresa Croyden, the "sleeping doll" of the title, who--then eight--was found alive sleeping in her bed when Pell murdered the rest of the family. Dance wants to interview her to find out what she remembers. And while the hunt for Pell is going on, so is the hunt for Theresa.
The book has the usual Deaver touches--knowledge of police procedure, expert placement of clues, constant changes of mood (when bad things seem about to happen often they don't, and the reverse), and lots of action. But it's strangely bloated--by Deaver standards, anyway. Maybe in his attempt to portray real families (Dance is a widow with two children and with both her parents alive) living in an area far from the artificial families New York singles create in their New York moments, he devoted too much time to fleshing them out.
And even the surprise twists that Deaver's famous for didn't come as all that much of a surprise to me in this case. When the tale seemed "done" with about 50 pages left to go, I pretty much figured out how those loose ends were going to be tied up, and maybe you will too.
Book Review: Transitional
Summary: 4 Stars
Deaver has written another breath-taking work, this time about the "human lie detector," Kathryn Dance. Not only is the main character different, with only a phone call to Lincoln Rhyme and the East Coast, but also I think this novel shows Deaver practicing and improving his skills. His plots have always been superb (not to mention the mechanics of his writing, which may go unnoticed), but they had certain common strains: you knew that some character would not be who they appeared to be at face value, and so forth. When I read this, I felt Deaver is trying out new plot structures and styles; since he is breaking free of old habits, some of the writing lacks the surety of early books, but this is a sign that he is moving forward.
The best is yet to come. When he wrote The Vanished Man, I thought Deaver would never top that. Now I believe he can.
Book Review: Great Read for Deaver Fans
Summary: 4 Stars
Great read, but a quite a contrived ending apparent to propogate Kathryn Dance Series ...