The Sleeping Doll by Jeffery Deaver

 Solitude Creek was captivating and engaging.  This book was slower and more detailed but the plot was very complex with plenty of surprises.  Deaver has Kathryn Dance, the kinesics (body language) expert at the CBI (California Bureau of Investigation as his main characters again.   A Charles Manson want-to-be escapes jail and terrorizes the community.  It is up to Dance and her colleagues to bring his reign of terror to a crashing halt. 

Deaver alludes to the sexual discrimination in law enforcement again in this book.   He also is a master of mis-direction.  He focuses your attention on his right hand while his left is moving characters in unlikely directions.

Once again, Dance's family provides the frame for her personality picture.  Dance's home life seems to be her Achilles hell.(intended)    Deaver seems to have a good understanding of the difficulties women in the work place face trying to balance professionalism with family.

The despicable Daniel Pell is a master of identifying the lost and lonely and providing them with a semblance of a demented family.   Sadly there are far too many young people who still feel alienated and discarded so the  premise of them being available victims is entirely too realistic.  

As a counselor I saw the same lost kids and did my best to provide them with direction but their home lives were often so dysfunctional that those efforts were often futile.

This is an excellent plot with plenty of action and devious twists and turns.

I highly recommend it.

website: http://www.jefferydeaver.com

This book may have been received free of charge from a publisher or a publicist. That will NEVER have a bearing on my recommendations.