Review by New York Times Review
Of all the beasts on the prowl, none is more unnerving than a disaffected teenage boy with a grudge and a gun. Leaving to others the in-depth psychological analysis of such youthful spree killers, Jeffery Deaver turns his attention in ROADSIDE CROSSES (Simon & Schuster, $26.95) to the social triggers that set them off. Someone on the scenic Monterey Peninsula is putting up highway memorials to victims of violent attacks that have yet to happen, and it falls to Kathryn Dance and her colleagues in the California Bureau of Investigation to solve this morbid mystery. Applying her expertise in kinesic analysis in interviews with local high school students, Dance determines from their body language that they're lying about something. The kids are more forthcoming when they go on The Chilton Report, a blog where everyone is flaming Travis Brigham, the "total fr33k" and "luser" who was driving the car in which two classmates were killed in a recent highway accident. When Travis takes off on his bike, the police are sure they have their killer. Surprisingly, clever Kathryn is a virgin when it comes to the blogosphere, and an attractive computer scientist, Dr. Jonathan Boling, must be imported from academia to initiate her into this arcane world. And a very good job he does of it, too, patiently instructing her in the language and logistics of social networking and the cruel Internet taunts that can unhinge an unstable personality. When it becomes apparent that the cyberbullies howling for Travis's blood are making themselves easy targets for the killer, Dance is reminded of Boling's words: "We give away too much information about ourselves online. Way too much." Once he dissects the journalistic ethics of messianic bloggers like the self-righteous moralizer behind The Chilton Report, Deaver moves on to alternative-reality Web sites like DimensionQuest, the violent role-playing game to which Travis is addicted. When Boling warns Dance that Travis "could be losing the distinction between the synthetic world and the real world," the author is drawing on real-life phenomena like the computer gaming centers and total-immersion pods that are turning players into bots. But the techno-savvy Deaver is too much the master gamesman to scold anyone else for a little excessive play, and in some brilliant plot maneuvers he counters every warning about warrior bloggers and glassy-eyed gamers with well-reasoned arguments in their defense - and real doubts about their proclivity to commit murder. Like his best players, he has one of those puzzle-loving minds you just can't trust. It's the scenery - and the big guy standing in front of the scenery - that keeps us coming back to Craig Johnson's lean and leathery mysteries. All the books in this series are set in Wyoming and feature Walt Longmire, the sheriff of Absaroka County, who's a good man to have on your side if you're a world-class rider jailed for shooting your husband after he burned down the stable with your horses inside. That's what happens in THE DARK HORSE (Viking, $24.95) to Mary Barsad, who refuses to talk about the bloodbath, leaving the sheriff to investigate in his own maverick style. Working undercover, Walt meets some crusty characters in a bar where beer is served only in cans ("Nobody ever got hurt throwing a can, and nobody in this part of the world ever threw a full one") and a Powder River PoundDown Tough-Man Contest is held every Friday night. Walt takes a few punches when he's roped into one of these fights, but that gets him a wild ride on a magnificent horse. And in the end, in one of those surprising grace notes that keep this series from falling into cowboy guff, it's the song of a meadowlark that gives the killer away. The bold narrator and chilling historical setting of A TRACE OF SMOKE (Forge/Tom Doherty, $24.95) can get you past the clunky writing in Rebecca Cantrell's first mystery. Set in Berlin in 1931, the sordid story is narrated by Hannah Vogel, a crime reporter for the Berliner Tageblatt. The crime she's secretly investigating hits close to home: the murder of her kid brother, a cabaret singer who was perhaps too flagrant a homosexual for the city's political climate. "This is no game," his older lover warns her. "There are real consequences for us all." After answering him in the same clichéd dialogue, Hannah ignores his advice and makes an enemy of Ernst Röhm, the brutal head of Hitler's brownshirts. Without much deviation from the woman-in-peril formula, Cantrell puts it in an unusually vivid context, letting Hannah report on the decadence of her world without losing her life - or her mind. With so many exhibitionist forensic experts showing off their extraordinary skills, it's a rare pleasure to sit down to a traditional detective story in which solid police work solves a crime. Inspector Hal Challis is very much in charge of the operations in an excellent Australian series written by Garry Disher. But as BLOOD MOON (Soho, $24) illustrates, it's smoothly coordinated teamwork that brings down the murderer of an agent of the Waterloo land use commission, a caring woman who shared Challis's alarm over the rampant real-estate development of the Mornington Peninsula and the nouveaux riches who demand it. There are no shootouts here. Just the drama of people from very different social classes locked in battle over the schools, the services, the beaches, the views and a way of life that has already gone behind a cloud. 'We give away too much information about ourselves online,' Deaver's heroine learns. 'Way too much.'
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [October 27, 2009]
Review by Booklist Review
Deaver is bound to slip up sometime. But not this time. This novel, which follows on the heels of Sleeping Doll (2007), again stars California Bureau of Investigation agent Kathryn Dance and, like its predecessor, is tightly constructed with a suspenseful story and plenty of plot twists. Deaver, perhaps more than any other crime writer, is able to fool even the most experienced readers with his right-angle turns, and this story of a serial killer who uses social networks to find his prey is full of them. Deaver's investigators are very good at their jobs, and in order to fool them (and us), he must be exceedingly clever, as well as just a little bit deceitful (having characters say things that turn out not to be true, for example, even though they believed the things when they said them). So far Deaver has avoided accidentally telegraphing a plot twist in advance, but someday, surely, he'll out-clever himself. Or maybe he won't. This is an excellent entry in what promises to be a series as popular as the author's Lincoln Rhyme novels.--Pitt, David Copyright 2009 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In bestseller Deaver's surprise-filled third Kathryn Dance novel (after The Sleeping Doll), Dance, an agent with the California Bureau of Investigation, gets an eye-opening education in some of the hottest areas of the cyberworld. After an auto accident kills two teens, vicious smears of Travis Brigham, the teen driver deemed responsible but not charged in the accident, appear on the Chilton Report, a popular blog. After one of the accusing bloggers barely survives an assault, Brigham becomes a "person of interest." Brigham disappears, and attacks, each preceded by a crude roadside cross, spread to other Chilton bloggers. Meanwhile, Dance also looks into a mercy killing at Monterey Bay Hospital that takes an unexpected turn, and Robert Harper, a special prosecutor from the attorney general's office in Sacramento, begins an investigation that will affect her. Deaver's expert and devious plotting makes it a challenge to stay only a couple of steps behind him. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Deaver brings back body-language expert Kathryn Dance (The Sleeping Doll) in a clever and twisted tale that explores the world of the Internet and the premise that words can be more powerful than any weapon. A roadside remembrance cross is found with the next day's date. When that day arrives, someone almost dies near the spot. As more memorials appear that seem to predict future deaths, Dance must push her talents to the limit; this killer lives in an online world and believes that his imaginary life is his real one. And how does an expert on human interaction deal with an avatar from a fake realm? The web sites mentioned throughout the book are actual live links and add to the fun. Though a couple of subplots get glossed over, the main story resonates. Dance is another exciting series character, and though this series has a ways to go before it achieves the devotion accorded Deaver's Rhyme/Sachs series, it has unlimited potential. Don't miss this one. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 2/15/09.]-Jeff Ayers, Seattle P.L. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Kinesics specialist Kathryn Dance's second case (The Sleeping Doll, 2007) gives her more chances to show her special expertise, but to less effect. Everyone's seen the homemade crosses, often arrayed with flowers, that mark fatal traffic accidents. But the memorials placed along the roads of Monterey, Calif., are different. They don't include the names of the dead, and they list today's or tomorrow's dates, making them less like memorials than like the taunting prophecies so beloved of Lincoln Rhyme's creator (The Broken Window, 2008, etc.). The California Bureau of Investigation is quick to link the first roadside cross to Tammy Foster, a high-school student abducted and locked in the trunk of her car, which was parked on the beach as the tide came in. Soon after, CBI investigator Dance, recalling a one-car accident that left two of Tammy's friends dead, realizes that The Chilton Report, a local blog about to go global, may have unleashed a wave of violence. Blogger James Chilton's online questionwhether the road on which high-school student Travis Brigham crashed the car had been adequately maintainedseemed innocuous enough, but the comments that followed, many of them attacks on Travis by fellow students, became increasingly vitriolic. Did the flame war erupt from cyberspace into the old-fashioned kind of space? A series of considerably more physical attacks, first against another student, then directed more generally at contributors to The Chilton Report, raises the stakes. Yet Dance seems mostly ineffectual, maybe due to the distractions of the obligatory turf wars and of her mother's arrest for euthanizing a hopelessly wounded patient in the hospital where she works as a nurse. Deaver's trademark plot twists are more numerous but less surprising than usual, with most of the alleged thunderclaps muffled. After 15 years as the master magician of the thriller, Deaver seems to be opting for a less demanding formula. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
