The Sleeping Doll (2007)
Jeffery Deaver is back with a dark and multilayered psychological thriller about a vicious killer’s escape from a California super-prison and the mysterious and deadly quest he embarks on once he’s free.
Making her first appearance in The Cold Moon (2006), special agent Kathryn Dance—a brilliant interrogator and body language expert—stars in The Sleeping Doll, where she and her partners at the California Bureau of Investigation hunt down escaped killer Daniel Pell, a self-styled Charles Manson.
Deaver’s most frightening villain to date, Pell is a master of control, who mesmerizes, seduces, and exploits people for his own murderous ends. To track down Pell before he destroys more lives, Kathryn Dance must enlist the help of people from the killer’s past: the three women who lived under his sadistic sway in the cult he once headed, as well as the young girl known as the Sleeping Doll, the only survivor of her family’s slaughter at Pell’s hand.
Filled with masterful plot twists: Jeffery Deaver creates plots with so many twists and turns they could “hide behind a spiral staircase” (People), and The Sleeping Doll has Deaver’s trademark twists in spades. It is guaranteed to keep readers guessing right up to the breathless end.
Praise
“Master manipulator that he is, Deaver shows us exactly how it’s done — and makes us admire his own literary artistry.”
—New York Times
“Deaver digs into his bottomless bag of unexpected twists and turns, keeping readers wide-eyed with surprise, and leaving them looking forward to more of the perspicacious Dance.”
—Publishers Weejly