The Sleeping Doll, Jeffery Deaver
25 Rating(s)
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The Sleeping Doll

Narrator: Anne Twomey

Abridged: 6 hr 26 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 06/05/2007


Synopsis

Lincoln Rhyme is back! The brilliant criminologist returns with his partner and paramour Amelia Sachs, in a blistering bestseller that tests forensic detective work in a brave new world.

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?

Author Bio

Chicago born author, Jeffery Deaver, has been richly rewarded for his successful career as a an American mystery/crime writer, including being a three-time Ellery Queen Reader's Award winner, and several different newspaper best of lists around the world.

Lincoln Rhyme, a quadriplegic detective is the main character in his most popular series of novels, such as The Broken Window. His time spent practicing law before he embarked on his writing career definitely gave him greater insight into the cases about which he writes.

He was writing about criminal hackers in his 2001 book, The Blue Nowhere. He also established a computer crime unit within the pages of the book. Several of his novels have been adapted for tv and movies. The most popular among them would be The Bone Collector, starring Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie.

Deaver was chosen to write an official James Bond novel, Carter Blanche, published on May 25, 2011, making him the second American author to participate in the series.

Reviews

AudiobooksNow review by Jeffrey on 2008-11-28 17:50:12

Jeffery Deaver's series featuring Kathryn Dance is a wonderful change of pace from the Lincoln Rhyme novels. She's smart but sensitive, and it's a pleasure to watch her unravel a witness's story. This book is a real page turner, and has lot's of surprise twists. Did I see some of them coming? Yes, because I knew that Deaver wouldn't ever serve the story up straight. But even then it was fun to say, Yes, I knew that character wasn't who s/he seemed to be! A great addition to the Deaver library.