Roadside Crosses

This is another of best-selling author Jeffrey Deaver's more than two dozen very suspenseful mystery novels, the third with Kathryn Dance as its principle character. There are two main plots and a host of interesting sub-plots. A killer taunts the police by displaying a cross on the side of a highway with flowers and with the date that he or she will commit a murder. This occurs several times. Senior Detective Kathryn Dance must find the murderer before there are more killings. As if this was not bother enough, Dance's mother, a nurse, is being charged with a mercy killing by a prosecutor whose apparent goal is nothing more than making a name for himself with a well-publicized case. Her mother seems to be angry at her for spending time on the cross-killings instead of helping her. The subplots include a possible romance for Dance with a computer expert, her infatuation with another man who is married and a minister leading disruptive right to life demonstrations. There are also several postmodern scientific subplots that readers will find to be both informative and exciting. One is the concept of a "synthetic world" in which young people - teen-agers through men and women in their twenties - play computer games. The games impact upon the personality of the players who frequently find themselves living in a second life which they prefer over reality. Contrary to what people think, the games do not cause people to act violently, but they do dislocate many players from the real world. A second scientific phenomenon that plays an important role in the novel is "kinesic analysis." "Kinesis" means reaction or response. This is an ability that Dance has, the ability to read and interpret body signals, facial expressions and hand, body and leg movements. Yet, despite her ability, is Dance capable of reading the body signals of the murder suspects? Does she make mistakes? Can she see what the computer expert and the married man feel about her? Can she read her own reactions? The third is the psychological effects of internet blogs both on blog writers and readers. People write their ideas on the internet and people react, frequently strangely to what has been written. Can blogs become addictive and, if so, to what extent? In short, the novel is filled with a good story, with both suspense and ideas, and readers will find a lot to enjoy.

Deaver's books are very hard to review because they inevitably involve major plot twists. To describe the books is, thus, to spoil them. Many of his books involve as many as three major twists with some mini-twists thrown in for good measure. Roadside Crosses is no exception. So here are the basics: It's a Kathryn Dance novel. Kathryn is the CBI kinesics expert; you don't want to lie to this woman; she'll scope out every truth and half-truth instantly. In Roadside Crosses she's investigating a case that involves the complexities of cyberspace. It focuses on a celebrated blogger whose posters are dying. It also focuses on a game player, an acned teenager who spends the bulk of his time in a synthetic world that is far preferable to the 'real' one that he is forced to inhabit. The lives of the gamer and the blogger intersect and Kathryn's job is to find the guilty and protect the innocent. Simultaneously, her mother is accused of a crime--euthanizing a man who has asked her to relieve his misery. Then there are the romantic entanglements. And the kids. And the dogs. And chilling the white wine. The result is typical Deaver--a set of complex, overlapping plots, a collection of likeable and unlikeable characters, a memorable setting, an array of information and facts about a subject of common interest (in this case the cyberworld) and then those plot twists. I won't tell you how many there are; I'll let you discover them for yourself. All in all, an excellent summer novel. Enjoy.

ROADSIDE CROSSES, Jeffery Deaver's latest novel, offers a bit of a departure from the work of one of thriller fiction's most unpredictable and reliable practitioners. It marks both the return of Kathryn Dance, last seen in THE SLEEPING DOLL, and a continuation of that book, tying up one major loose end left over from its predecessor and creating a number of new ones. The novel takes place over the course of an extremely busy and deadly five-day workweek that sees Dance challenged personally and professionally on a number of different levels. After a young woman is kidnapped and left to drown in the trunk of a car, a roadside cross commemorating the event is found nearby. The incident is tied to a prior automobile accident in which two high school students were killed. Travis Brigham, a social outcast among his peers, admitted to driving the car involved in the fatal crash. A posting about the accident on The Chilton Report, an immensely popular Internet blog, has resulted in a flurry of online attacks against Brigham, which have grown increasingly incendiary. When the kidnapping occurs, it appears that Brigham is retaliating against the online attacks; as more take place, the Monterey area is thrown into a panic. In her capacity as a senior agent with the California Bureau of Investigation, Dance is brought into the mix when an area-wide manhunt for Brigham commences, and her skills as a body-language expert are brought to bear during witness interviews. Dance comes to learn that Brigham is immersed in the world of online reality gaming, and appears to be blurring the distinction between the violence of the online world he inhabits and the real world. It is imperative that Dance locates Brigham, who can seemingly appear and vanish at will, but she has a couple of major distractions. The largest concerns the death of Juan Millar, which occurred at the conclusion of THE SLEEPING DOLL. In the midst of Dance's own investigation, her mother, a nurse at the hospital where Millar died, is inexplicably charged with his murder. Meanwhile, Dance finds herself in the crosshairs of a bureaucratic investigation, with her boss pinning the bullseye right on her forehead. To make matters worse, Monterey County Sheriff Michael O'Neil, who frequently works with Dance, is suddenly unavailable to help her on the Brigham case. As matters rapidly reach a frightening conclusion, Dance finds that she is placing herself and her colleagues in danger from sources both known and unexpected, even as she slowly begins to face the possibility that her own mother may be a killer. ROADSIDE CROSSES contains a number of examples of Deaver's classic methods of misdirection. Interestingly enough, however, he relies less on those tried and true plot elements and more upon straightforward, but no less fascinating, police work. For those unfamiliar with blogging and online gaming, this book will be a real eye-opener into both worlds. And if you are reading solely for his clever div

Deaver specializes in thrillers, and in "Roadside Crosses" he manages enough twists and turns to keep you compulsively turning the pages. Here's the quick summation: go out an buy this book! Kathryn Dance, whom Deaver introduced a few novels ago, is a specialist in reading people. The momentary smile or constant blinking of a suspect--something those without her training would never notice--gives her real insight into whether a suspect is lying or not. This time, she is up against an internet genius. Someone, it seems, is putting up roadside crosses, not, as is usual, as a memorial to someone who died in an auto crash. But as a way to announce a coming death. But why? And who? The computer genius Dance is pitted against is as clever as it gets. Don't expect you can guess where Deaver is leading you; he's a terrific writer, and this is one of his best books yet.

The Chilton Report blog, owned and operated by Jim Chilton, opens up a discussion thread dubbed Roadside Crosses, which questions why an accident occurred on the spot where two roadsides intersect. The teens were going home after a graduation party; but two died, one was hospitalized and driver Travis Brigham hardly had a scratch. On the blog, everyone attacks Travis holding him responsible for vehicular homicide. He becomes the victim of a cyber war in which each part is uglier than the previously horrific segue as people accuse him of all sorts of crimes. Tammy Parker was kidnapped and thrown into the trunk if her car, which he drove into the ocean at high tide; she was fortunate to be rescued. She said Travis did it Another female almost died from poisonous fumes; she tells the cops Travis did it. California Bureau of Investigation agent Kathryn Dance investigates Travis, but when she tries to see him a second time, he is gone. As more people on the blog claim Travis attacked them, Kathryn applies her kinetics expertise to separate the lies from the truth in hopes of catching Travis before he kills again; he knows if he is caught he has no prayer as the evidence is extraordinarily overwhelming. Jeffrey Deaver, author of the great Lincoln Rhymes mysteries, has another hit series with the Kathryn Dance police procedurals (see THE SLEEPING DOLL). The protagonist seems genuine because she makes mistakes even with her being the department's expert on reading body language. As she follows clues that seem to inch her closer to the perpetrator, she must deal with her mom being arrested for a mercy killing while also coping with the Blog attacks coaxing politicians to pressure her and other cops to catch Travis. There are plenty of red herrings and misdirections as Mr. Deaver provides an intriguing high tech thriller; that besides an exhilarating cat and mouse murder investigation looks deep into the influence of blogs. Harriet Klausner