A former jury consultant, Kathryn Dancer works for the
California Bureau of Investigation as a Kinesics analyst
and interrogator or in plain English -- a human lie
detector. Called on to interview a jailed cult leader,
Daniel Pell (who eight years earlier killed a family of
four), Kathryn's job is to question him regarding an
unsolved murder 10 years ago. After the interrogation, Pell
pulls a spectacular jailbreak and goes on a killing spree,
staying one step ahead of Kathryn and her partners as they
pursue him.
Trying to capture Pell, Kathryn looks back at his past
behaviors as she attempts to dissect his motives. She
gathers his former cult members and probes their memories
looking for behavior patterns that will help them capture
Pell. She tracks down and interviews the only family member
Pell did not kill -- a young girl the press calls The
Sleeping Doll.
Pell, a master manipulator, needs to control and transform
his followers into his own creatures. If they are not
susceptible to him, Pell kills them. The intense public
pressure on Kathryn and her team to capture Pell causes her
superiors to add another member to their team -- Kellogg, a
cult specialist and profiler, who increases the tension
within the group.
Suspense quickly builds in this riveting tale of a sadistic
serial killer. With considerable skill, Deaver employs
twists and turns that escalate the tensions with an ending
that will surprise everyone. THE SLEEPING DOLL is a
departure from Deaver's excellent Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia
Sachs series, but I hope this is a start of a new series
featuring Special Agent Kathryn Dance, who was first
introduced in Deaver's THE COLD MOON (which is being issued
in paperback by Pocket Star on May 22, 2007).
When Special Agent Kathryn Dance -- a brilliant
interrogator and kinesics expert with the California Bureau
of Investigation -- is sent to question the convicted
killer Daniel "Son of Manson" Pell as a suspect in a newly
unearthed crime, she feels both trepidation and
electrifying intrigue. Pell is serving a life sentence for
the brutal murders of the wealthy Croyton family in Carmel
years earlier -- a crime mirroring those perpetrated by
Charles Manson in the 1960s. But Pell and his cult members
were sloppy: Not only were they apprehended, they even left
behind a survivor -- the youngest of the Croyton daughters,
who, because she was in bed hidden by her toys that
terrible night, was dubbed the Sleeping Doll.
But the girl never spoke about that night, nor did the
crime's mastermind. Indeed, Pell has long been both
reticent and unrepentant about the crime. And so with the
murderer transported from the Capitola superprison to an
interrogation room in the Monterey County Courthouse, Dance
sees an opportunity to pry a confession from him for the
recent murder -- and to learn more about the depraved mind
of this career criminal who considers himself a master of
control, a dark Svengali, forcing people to do what they
otherwise would never conceive of doing. In an electrifying
psychological jousting match, Dance calls up all her skills
as an interrogator and kinesics -- body language -- expert
to get to the truth behind Daniel Pell.
But when Dance's plan goes terribly wrong and Pell escapes,
leaving behind a trail of dead and injured, she finds
herself in charge of her first-ever manhunt. But far from
simply fleeing, Pell turns on his pursuers -- and other
innocents -- for reasons Dance and her colleagues can't
discern. As the idyllic Monterey Peninsula is paralyzed by
the elusive killer, Dance turns to the past to find the
truth about what Daniel Pell is really up to. She tracks
down the now teenage Sleeping Doll to learn what really
happened that night, and she arranges a reunion of three
women who were in his cult at the time of the killings. The
lies of the past and the evasions of the present boil up
under the relentless probing of Kathryn Dance, but will the
truth about Daniel Pell emerge in time to stop him from
killing again?
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