Jeffery Deaver: The Sleeping Doll (UK 2008)

From the Publisher:
The first gripping mystery in the Kathryn Dance series from master of suspense, and author of the Lincoln Rhyme novels, Jeffery Deaver.
California Bureau of Investigation Special agent Kathryn Dance is an expert in kinesics: the science of interpreting behaviour. It makes her a brilliant interrogator. But she's up against Daniel Pell, a master of control who mesmerises, seduces and exploits people for his own murderous ends. A convicted killer who is known as The Son of Manson for the chilling parallels between him and the notorious ritual murderer.

To track down Pell before he destroys yet more lives, Kathyn Dance must enlist the help of four people from the killer's past. The three women who lived under his sadistic sway in the cult he once headed. And the young girl known as the Sleeping Doll, the only survivor of her family's slaughter at Pell's hands...

Jeffery Deaver: The Sleeping Doll. Introducing Kathryn Dance. Hodder & Stoughton, ISBN: 0340833866 (July, 2008), 560 p., £6.99.

Jeffery Deaver: The Sleeping Doll (USA 2008)

From the Publisher:
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?

Jeffery Deaver: The Sleeping Doll. A Kathryn Dance Novel. Simon & Schuster, ISBN: 0743491580 (May, 2008), 580 p., $9.99.

Jeffery Deaver: The Sleeping Doll (UK 2007)

From the Publisher:
Daniel Pell is a contemporary Charles Manson. A petty criminal with a history of antisocial behavior and obsession with controlling other people, he had a group of women living with him in a quasi cult in central California. Eight years ago, he and another man viciously slaughtered a family for no apparent reason, though the three women in his "Family" were absolved of any part in the deaths. Now, present day, Pell has escaped and Kathryn Dance, the famed interrogator and kinesic analyst 'body language' and her team, must find out where he is and why he's staying near the prison he escaped from. She brings together the three women, now leading normal lives, to help her find out where Pell is and what he's up to. Pell, for his part, and a young woman he has manipulated to help him, tries to outguess the police and fulfill his mission, as he learns that Kathryn Dance is perhaps his most dangerous opponent.

This is a typical cat and mouse Deaver novel, in which conflicts abound -- finding the killer, as well as reconciling the emotions within Pell's three 'Family' members, which have simmered over the years. The 'Sleeping Doll' refers to the one surviving daughter of the original murder eight years ago -- a nickname because she was asleep with her toys and not seen by the killer. Dance has to find her and see what she call her about the night of the killings.

Nothing is quite what it seems to be...

Jeffery Deaver: The Sleeping Doll. Introducing Kathryn Dance. Hodder & Stoughton, ISBN: 034083384X (August, 2007), 415 p., £14.99.

Jeffery Deaver: The Sleeping Doll (USA 2007)

From the Publisher:
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?

Jeffery Deaver: The Sleeping Doll. A Novel. Simon & Schuster, ISBN: 0743260945 (June, 2007), 428 p., $26.95.