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Roadside Crosses (Kathryn Dance #2)

by Jeffery Deaver (Goodreads Author)

3.67 · rating details · 2,400 ratings · 407 reviews

"The Monterey Peninsula is rocked when a killer begins to leave roadside crosses beside local highways - not in memoriam, but as announcements of his intention to kill. And to kill in particularly horrific and efficient ways: using the personal details about the victims that they've carelessly posted in blogs and on social networking websites." "The case lan

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Hardcover, 397 pages

Published June 9th 2009 by Simon & Schuster (first published May 18th 2009)

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May 02, 2011

Linda rated it

Shelves: mystery-thriller

Jeffrey Deaver's ROADSIDE CROSSES is the first of the Deaver books that has not kept my attention. I found that it wasn’t as captivating as I thought it would be. I know the area where the story took place having spent much of my life in the Salinas/Monterey/Carmel area. I enjoyed listening to the descriptions of the region but the characters seemed shallow and did not captivate me. I was particularly bothered by the way that Kathryn Dance’s relationship with her mother was treated. That pi...more

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Jul 08, 2010

Christine rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: 2010-reads

As with most Jeffrey Deaver books that educate readers about a certain topic (i.e. how electricity works, what dirt is composed of), Roadside Crosses also attempts to teach, in this case, a myriad of topics about the computer and the internet. Deaver covers blogging, virtual reality gaming, erasing and restoring hard drives, tracking IP addresses and a whole lot of other computer-based subjects, some much better than others. However, where this book FAILED for me was that Katherine Dance, whom I...more

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Jul 22, 2009

Kate rated it

Shelves: cops, crime, forensics, plot-twist

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Jan 19, 2012

Mark O'Neill rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, crime, thriller, murder, detective, usa, california, internet, blog

Agent Kathryn Dance returns as an investigator for the California Bureau of Investigation after her last outing in the Sleeping Doll. This time, she starts to investigate after roadside crosses start to appear for murders that haven't happened yet.[return][return]It seems that the killer is taunting them by telling them the date of the next victim but obviously not where it will take place. So they know the clock is ticking until the next victim but they are powerless to stop it. Their inve...more

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Jan 31, 2011

Sarah rated it

Roadside Crosses is the second novel in Deaver's newer Kathryn Dance series. Always a huge fan of Jeffery Deaver, especially his Lincoln Rhyme series, I'm proud and excited to say I strongly favor his Kathryn Dance series more.

Kathryn Dance is an expert in kinesics, which is the study and analysis of body language. In addition to the contribution kinesics makes to the mystery in the novel at hand, it's interesting to learn about body language techniques since we can apply them to rea...moreRoadside Crosses is the second novel in Deaver's newer Kathryn Dance series. Always a huge fan of Jeffery Deaver, especially his Lincoln Rhyme series, I'm proud and excited to say I strongly favor his Kathryn Dance series more.

Kathryn Dance is an expert in kinesics, which is the study and analysis of body language. In addition to the contribution kinesics makes to the mystery in the novel at hand, it's interesting to learn about body language techniques since we can apply them to real life situations we face daily. Learning about crime forensics is fun too, but I highly doubt I'll be analyzing hair fibres from a shirt found on a piece of tape found at the crime scene of a murder anytime soon.

In Roadside Crosses, a killer begins to leave shrewd crosses at random locations along the Monterey Peninsula to signify memorials where murders and accidents have yet to occur. The murderer then stages horrific crimes modeled after each victim's fears that can publicly be found online in forums, blogs, and various other social media outlets where profiles and information has been posted carelessly for all to see.

Roadside Crosses is full of Deaver's usual red herrings and twists with added subplots that deal with the ongoing cast of characters. Deaver adds an author's note to the beginning of the novel challenging readers to visit websites listed throughout the book to follow along and help with solving the mystery.

For readers longing for a romantic subplot to accompany the novel's action and suspense, Deaver has a slow building up of sexual tension developing between Kathryn Dance and her bureau partner Michael O'Neil, of which I'm hoping a relationship will eventually come to fruition in future installments.

I particularly enjoy Roadside Crosses because it really does confront the accountability people lack in present days regarding posting their personal business on social networking sites for all to see. Tsk tsk tsk. Thanks for letting us know you're going to the gym at 8pm on a dark, rainy Tuesday night so we can ransack your house. Okay so maybe I won't, but someone else will. Think about it.

The first novel in the Kathryn Dance series is The Sleeping Doll (2007). The newest release from the Lincoln Rhyme series is The Burning Wire (2010).

Read more book reviews at http://dreamworldbooks.com.(less)

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Jan 15, 2011

Laura rated it

Shelves: ipad

Plenty of others have already supplied a description of the book, so I won't do that. All I will do is tell you that that Roadside Crosses, the second in Deaver's Kathryn Dance series, is almost impossible to put down. But that's probably more true if you have an interest in or follow the minutiae of how the entire blogging community works — and the power that it has, particularly for vulnerable young people. Much of the novel's core storyline hinges on that, but even if all things tech summon l...more

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Nov 21, 2010

Michelle O'flynn rated it

The second story in the Kathryn Dance series, and it's a winner. I was quite taken by her character when introduced ina Lincoln Rhyme edition, and delighted to find her in her own element and series. This is even better than the first, and while we are familiar with some of Dance's co-workers, we are getting to know them even better....including the relationship she has with a colleague in the Sheriff's Office Mike O'Neil.

The plot is racey, plenty of surprises and suspense, but for...more

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Sep 08, 2010

Jennie rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: mystery, thriller

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. This book was good for some fluffy beach (ok, rainy day on the couch) reading. Interesting concept, with the killer leaving crosses to announce an attack, interesting main character.

The story falls short of being interesting when Deaver takes time out to explain blogs and online role-playing games as if this were 1997 and no one had heard of them. I am willing to suspend disbelief, but for a 40-something(?) law enforcement agent (with a website of her own) in 2009 to need long, d...moreThis book was good for some fluffy beach (ok, rainy day on the couch) reading. Interesting concept, with the killer leaving crosses to announce an attack, interesting main character.

The story falls short of being interesting when Deaver takes time out to explain blogs and online role-playing games as if this were 1997 and no one had heard of them. I am willing to suspend disbelief, but for a 40-something(?) law enforcement agent (with a website of her own) in 2009 to need long, drawn out explanations of this here interweb thingy pushes credibility a little far. Also, we are encouraged to check out any URLs we "happen" to come across in the book (yes, it actually says "happen" to come across even though they're front and center, in italics, and kind of hard to miss). Yay for interactive stuff, but I really don't want to get off my comfy couch and pull out my computer in the middle of a book to go check out a fake blog - or any blog, really. I didn't really get that. After awhile the URL insertions seemed a little desperate.

The "suspense" got old after the first two times Deaver pulled the M Knight Shayamalan so-desperate-for-you-to-believe-this-but-it's-really-this act. It started to feel like "Gotcha! Right? Right? RIGHT? RIGHT? Until I just started thinking "the police got there just in time. Oh! Look! They got there just in time! Again! Again! Ag-oh, that one's dead, oh - that one too - Just in time! Again! Again! Yawn.

One last tiny, nitpicky thing: In the "About the Author" section of the book, Deaver's many accolades are listed, as well as his former careers. Nowhere does it say he has spent much time around law enforcement agents (and I didn't care enough to research him further). My point is this: I have police officers in the family. I worked with police officers. I have friends who are police officers. I've been in several roll calls, and on several ride-alongs. I did an unscientific survey of my police officer family and acquaintances, and the results are in: not once have I heard, nor have they ever used, nor have they heard their colleagues use, "perp". "Suspect" or "subject", yes. "Perp"? TV. 500 pages of "perp" starts to sound like nails on a chalkboard, even in my own head. Stop it!

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Jul 04, 2010

Jerry rated it

Disappointing Kathryn Dance sequel -- little mystery, way too much blogging

We thoroughly enjoyed Deaver's new character Kathyrn Dance, a specialist in kinesics (body language), who helped solve the mystery in the author's Lincoln Rhyme novel "Cold Moon". She then "starred" in her own first complete story, "Sleeping Doll", which we found highly entertaining. Unfortunately, the author missed the mark completely in "Crosses", her third appearance,...more

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Apr 05, 2010

Schnaucl rated it

Shelves: april, fiction, library, mystery_crime, read_2010, series

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Two and a half stars, really.

I had a lot of problems with this book.

It's been a while since I had a problem with excessive use of the word "like" but I still remember how it was used, and it was definitely not the way Deaver used it. He often has teens using it as the first word in a sentence and that's just not correct.

His use of the term "synthetic world" bothered me. It's technically correct, but no one I know calls it that. It's on-li...moreTwo and a half stars, really.

I had a lot of problems with this book.

It's been a while since I had a problem with excessive use of the word "like" but I still remember how it was used, and it was definitely not the way Deaver used it. He often has teens using it as the first word in a sentence and that's just not correct.

His use of the term "synthetic world" bothered me. It's technically correct, but no one I know calls it that. It's on-line or cyberspace not "synthetic world."

I don't think most teenagers would follow a local political blog and I can't see the ones who would be interested in that sort of thing using "l33t" all the time. Reading the thread on the blog was just painful. It's the kind of thing I'd have skipped entirely if I were reading a thread on-line.

I think it's rare that people can't distinguish between their on-line and off-line lives. They might prefer their on-line life, but Deaver made it sound as though they thought it was more real and I don't think that's accurate for most people.

I also didn't understand the skepticism that an on-line friend could turn into an off-line friend. I think that's a common experience for the vast majority of people who have spent significant time on-line.

And there was the usual stereotype that only geeks/nerds/social outcasts/losers play MMORPGs although I did like that they were able to use his on-line persona to figure out something about his personality, of course, many people play characters that are nothing at all like their real personalities and plenty of people who would never hurt anyone in real life have no trouble playing violent video games. So while I'm glad it wasn't playing MMORPGs and/or violent video games makes one into a killer/more willing to do harm there were still some problematic elements.

Dance's obvious romantic interest in her married partner made me really uncomfortable. I don't care if she doesn't like his wife and doesn't think she's a good mother. As far as she knew it was a happy marriage and emotional infidelity is just plain wrong. Now that he and his wife are separating/divorcing, fine. But that didn't happen until the very end of the book so the rest of the time it just made me uncomfortable and dislike the protagonist.

I find the kinesics stuff fascinating, but she was talking to the killer how many times and never picked up that he was guilty?

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Aug 24, 2009

Richard Lollar rated it

Recommends it for: Anyone who likes a good puzzle/mystery, California, on-line computer games.

Recommended to Richard by: I read all of Mr. Deaver's work.

There is so much going on in this book and it is very satisfying on many levels. Jeffrey Deaver, yet another retired attorney, lays out a very complicated plot and keeps it all finely balanced to the real end. I lost count of the false trails and conclusions he leads us on.

Mr. Deaver, who has also created over 25 other novels featuring quadriplegic criminalist Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs or California Bureau of Investigation kinesics expert Kathryn Dance and Monterey County Sherif...more

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Jul 26, 2009

Judy rated it

Dance, an agent with the California Bureau of Investigation, gets an eye-opening education in some of the hottest areas of the cyberworld. After an auto accident kills two teens, vicious smears of Travis Brigham, the teen driver deemed responsible but not charged in the accident, appear on the Chilton Report, a popular blog. After one of the accusing bloggers barely survives an assault, Brigham becomes a person of interest. Brigham disappears, and attacks, each preceded by a crude roadside cross...more

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Jul 07, 2009

stephanie rated it

Shelves: 2009, mystery

damn you, deaver! you were my gold standard for research, and you failed me. not on everything - but you failed me nonetheless. my heart broke a little each time you got something wrong. where was your map? why do you refuse to say that pebble beach exists? you do know carmel valley isn't carmel which isn't carmel by the sea, right? the name of the hospital! the highways! ACK.

of course, some things he got right. which made me happy.

longer review later but: kathryn dance...more

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Jul 06, 2009

Chuck rated it

Jeffery Deaver was "CSI" before the series was invented, one of the first novelists (along with Patricia Cornwell) to emphasize crime scene investigation to solve crimes. His best known "detective" is Lincoln Rhyme; movie fans will know Rhyme as Denzel Washington (playing opposite a young Angelina Jolie). This novel is a "series spinoff," following the work of Katherine Dance, a California Bureau of Investigation detective whose specialty is kinesics, the science ...moreJeffery Deaver was "CSI" before the series was invented, one of the first novelists (along with Patricia Cornwell) to emphasize crime scene investigation to solve crimes. His best known "detective" is Lincoln Rhyme; movie fans will know Rhyme as Denzel Washington (playing opposite a young Angelina Jolie). This novel is a "series spinoff," following the work of Katherine Dance, a California Bureau of Investigation detective whose specialty is kinesics, the science of understanding whether people are telling the truth by reading their body language. Dance was introduced in the Lincoln Rhyme novel 'Cold Moon.'

The creation of Dance was, I think, a smart choice for Deaver. As interesting as the Rhyme series is, an author can get stuck, grow predictable and, especially since "CSI," can grow stale describing the painstaking examination of a crime scene (the series is parodied good naturedly in Roadside Crosses, BTW). And Dance is an atypical detective--a mom, a daughter, living in the town she grew up in, the antithesis of the 'loner rootless detective' that is one of the mainstays of American crime fiction.

This complicated plot can be summarized thus. A killer, for reasons unknown, is leaving crosses commemorating people's deaths by the side of the road, but is leaving them prior to the date of the killing. Suspicion turns to a 17 year old boy who has been cyberbullied in a blog called 'The Chilton Report,' which is run by a man who seems to be a responsible journalist but whose readers spout vitriol about people who often aren't even mentioned in the blog. Who is the 'Roadside Cross' killer? What are his or her motives? Who is he or she trying to kill? An side plot comes when Dance's nurse mother, Edie, is prosecuted for the mercy killing of a California Highway Patrol officer.

The novel is a fascinating exploration of the way news has changed since online news outlets and blogs became and acceptable form of news. Who is responsible for content? If the net is unregulated, can people be held for posting scathing comments, often anonymously. What can happen when people, acting on false information, "gang up" on someone, accusing her or him of awful things? How can someone like a teenage boy defend himself from such attacks? Recover from such attacks? Restore his reputation after such attacks? Factor in that so many people reveal so much about themselves online, especially to "friends" on online social networking sites, and you have a very plausible series of murders waiting to happen.

This is also one of the least bloody and violent mystery/detective novels I've read in a long time. In an age when CSI and NCIS has anesthetized us to dead bodies, autopsies, and blood, it's nice to read a thriller that's gripping and yet not gory.

I give the book three stars, which may be unfair, because I'm comparing it to Deaver's other books. If you look at say, Cold Moon, or Garden of Bears (not one of Deaver's series books but, in my opinion, as good a piece of historical fiction as has been written in the last ten years), Roadside Crosses is OK but is not at the top of the Deaver canon. Great characters (Dance is admirable and fun to "be around" as a reader), fascinating situation, plot that is fairly unpredictable and yet the author "plays fair" by "setting up" the twists that come. But the plot is a bit too complicated. There are too many rescues at the last minute--there are at least ten sections where a character seems to be facing death, and each is rescued (save one, a minor character we meet only once whose main job seems to be to serve as corpse). Nine out of ten rescues--a bit predictable. There are also so many characters that even a good mystery reader can't keep them all straight.

Overall, a book worth reading--entertaining and diverting. Not one of Deaver's best, but still quite worthwhile. And thanks to my 3-year old, Benjamin, for giving me this book for Father's Day! Love ya, buddy!

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Jul 21, 2009

Diane rated it

Most of us have probably seen at least a few "roadside crosses" along some highway, memorializing the individual who died at that spot in of a car accident. In Jeffrey Deaver's latest book: Roadside Crosses, home made crosses start appearing along a California highway with no name on them, but with a date in to the future, as a killer announces his intention to kill. Even more disturbing is the fact that the killer seems to be using personal information obtained through blog posts, and...more

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Sep 03, 2009

Sharon rated it

Deaver has created a fascinating protagonist in Kathryn Dance, an officer in the California Bureau of Investigation. In this book, Dance is torn between dealing with a serial killer case and her mother's arrest on charges of murder.

The serial killer case focuses on commenters in a fictional blog, "The Chilton Report." The murder charges relate to actions in the previous Kathryn Dance novel, in which a police officer is seriously burned in the line of duty. The officer di...more

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Jan 29, 2011

Daniel rated it

· review of another edition

This was a nice diversion - the kind of book that you can read through at a quick clip, skipping the nonessentials to reach the plot points that have been disconnected in suspense-generating ways. The story was one of crime, and the characters who unraveled it were, if not of depth, at least as human as their limited portraits allowed.

Criticisms that came to light while walking the dog, hours after closing the book:

--The advertised "twists" - apparently a Deaver tra...more

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May 08, 2010

Kristin rated it

My mother's favorite book of all time is Deaver's 'The Bone Collector', and she has read many books, so I had high expectations of Deaver when I read this book, my first of his. Unfortunately, this book didn't really live up to them.
Roadside crosses are common around here, as there are many car accidents, especially involving young people, so I thought it might parallel what I know in real life. Instead, the crosses played a fairly minor role in the book, that I don't really think it earne...more

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Sep 02, 2009

Caitlin rated it

Shelves: 2009

Jeffrey Deaver is another big favorite of mine. He's prolific, but he always delivers a quality page-turning thriller. He's got several series going, most famously the Lincoln Rhyme novels, but this is the second book in a new series of novels featuring California Bureau of Investigations agent Kathryn Dance. Where Lincoln Rhyme is interesting because he is a highly intelligent & driven forensic scientist who happens to be a quadriplegic, Kathryn Dance is interesting because she's an expert i...more

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Aug 30, 2009

Kellie rated it

Shelves: 2009-reads, mystery-thrillers, kathryn-dance-series, series

#2 of the Katherine Dahl series-First, I still think Deaver is one of the best thriller/mystery writers out there. I enjoyed the computer game/blog theme in this book. It is very interesting. Deaver obviously does a great deal of research for his books and I always learn something when I read them. This book was definitely full of the twists and turns Deaver is known for. It will keep me reading into the night because I can’t put it down. I enjoy the Katherine Daul series. I’m beginning to l...more

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Dec 19, 2009

Stef rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: police-procedural, audiobook, fiction, mystery

Audiobook is competently narrated by Michelle Pawk.

This is the first Deaver I've read that doesn't feature Lincoln Rhyme as the main character. I didn't like it as much as the Lincoln Rhyme books.
Partly it's because I don't find Kathryn Dance to be a very interesting character compared to Rhyme.

But mainly the problem was that the plot turned around blogging and online gaming. Deaver has done research, but he's so clearly an outsider to the subcultures he is writin...more

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Apr 27, 2011

Marianne rated it

· review of another edition

Roadside Crosses is the second in Jeffrey Deaver’s Kathryn Dance series. The story starts with a roadside cross memorial which is dated for the following day, the day that police find a kidnapped teenager left for dead in the trunk of her car. Kathryn’s interrogation of the teen points to a blogging site where cyber bullying seems to have led to retaliation. More roadside crosses appear, and more victims follow. As Kathryn and her team race to identify those posting on the blogs to warn them of ...more

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Feb 12, 2011

Jennifer (JC-S) rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: librarybooks

‘We give away too much information about ourselves online. Way too much.’

Memorial crosses are being placed along roads on the Monterey Peninsula, and it quickly becomes apparent that the crosses are being placed in advance of the deaths to which they are related. Kathryn Dance and her colleagues from the California Bureau of Investigation are tasked with trying to find out who is placing the crosses, and preventing more deaths from occurring.

Local high school students ...more‘We give away too much information about ourselves online. Way too much.’

Memorial crosses are being placed along roads on the Monterey Peninsula, and it quickly becomes apparent that the crosses are being placed in advance of the deaths to which they are related. Kathryn Dance and her colleagues from the California Bureau of Investigation are tasked with trying to find out who is placing the crosses, and preventing more deaths from occurring.

Local high school students are interviewed after one of their classmates narrowly escapes death. Kathryn Dance determines, using her skills in kinesic analysis, that the students know something and that they are not sharing all of their information with the police. But other facts are coming to light: on a prominent local blog called ‘The Chilton Report’, the students are talking about Travis Brigham who was driving a car in which two classmates were killed. When Travis takes off, after the police visit him, the police are sure he is their killer.

What follows is an interesting journey through the information and disinformation in the online world. The information that people share on blogs and through other social media, and the alternate realities of those, such as Travis, who prefer the roles they can play online to those they occupy in person.

‘The stories were in that blog. They have to be true, don’t they?’

It becomes clear that those howling for Travis Brigham’s blood are making themselves easy targets for the killer. While Kathryn Dance learns about the dangers of cyberspace (courtesy of Dr Jonathan Boling), her personal life is in turmoil as her mother is charged with the murder of a terminally ill hospital patient.

There are plenty of twists and turns in this story, and while some aspects of the delivery didn’t work well for me, I found this an interesting rainy day read. It’s a reminder that while danger lurks in both the virtual and actual worlds, the obvious precautions are not always enough.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith
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Jul 01, 2009

Christa rated it

Shelves: library

There were some aspects of this second Kathryn Dance novel that I found to be very original. Deaver has set up a website to read along with the book. I found it to be a very clever addition to the book. I like the character of Kathryn Dance and I enjoyed this book. Several of the interesting secondary characters from the first Kathryn Dance book appeared, and new ones were introduced. The book continued some storylines from Sleeping Doll and introduced some new ones.

Katrhyn Dance, w...more

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Aug 16, 2011

K.D. rated it

Shelves: crime, guy-lit, suspense-thriller

Roadside crosses. Roadside memorials. Those crosses along the highway. Those sad and forlorn images at the side of the road marking the places where sudden and unexpected deaths happened. Places where the person was last seen alive. Places where parents went to in the middle of the night or in the wee hours of the morning after receiving a call from the police. Where they shed tears. Where dreams ended.

Jeffery Deaver (born 1950) is an American mystery/crime writer. He is a journalist, no...moreRoadside crosses. Roadside memorials. Those crosses along the highway. Those sad and forlorn images at the side of the road marking the places where sudden and unexpected deaths happened. Places where the person was last seen alive. Places where parents went to in the middle of the night or in the wee hours of the morning after receiving a call from the police. Where they shed tears. Where dreams ended.

Jeffery Deaver (born 1950) is an American mystery/crime writer. He is a journalist, novelist and a practicing lawyer. Many of his books promote “lateral thinking” that is a way to solve problems using an indirect and creative approach using reasoning that is not immediately obvious and involving ideas that may not be obtainable by using only traditional step-by-step logic. Compared with “critical thinking” that is primarily concerned with judging the true value of statements and seeking errors, lateral thinking is more concerned with the movement value of statements and ideas. A person who thinks laterally moves from one unknown idea to create a new idea. The term “lateral thinking” was coined by Edward de Bono (born 1933) in his book New Think: The Use of Lateral Thinking published in 1967. Three Deaver’s novels have been turned into films: The Bone Collector (1999), A Maiden’s Grave as the TV film Dead Silence (1997) and The Devil’s Teardrop in 2010, another TV film.

Deaver made use of both “roadside crosses” and “lateral thinking” in this book, Roadside Crosses (published 2009), the second novel in his Kathryn Dance series. Kathryn Dance is an agent with the California Bureau of Investigation, which is similar to that of the FBI. She’s a young widow of a former FBI agent and the mother of two children, Wes and Maggie. She is an expert of Kinesis or body language and in interrogation and interviewing witnesses and suspects.

In this book, Detective Dance and his deputy Michael O’Neil are tasked to solve the killings associated with roadside crosses along the road in Monterey Peninsula. The roadside crosses are clues on the killing as they bear the date after it is installed. In other words, if the duo see the cross today, the killing will happen tomorrow because it has a date on when the killer intend to kill. The killer even has a style: he kills his victim based on the details the victim carelessly posted in blogs and other social networking websites, e.g., Facebook, Twitter, etc. For example, if the victim wrote in his blog that he has a phobia on snakes, then the killer will have an anaconda swallow the person until he dies. These are the two unique ingredients of this book’s milleau: the crosses and the blogs and Deaver effectively used both to engage his readers. The plot is a typical whodunit but it is hard to second-guess Deaver and it is definitely impossible to be two steps ahead of him in the game. In other words, you may be able to say that oh, I knew that was coming if you are just a paragraph ahead of the revelation but it is impossible to predict what will happen at the end if you are just in the middle of the book.

The moral lesson of the book is not the usual don’t drink and drive which is more often than not the reason why you have those roadside crosses. Rather, it is to be careful in sharing personal things about yourself in the cyberspace. You just don’t know how some screwed and loony people could use those against you or your loved ones. Oh well, my reviews tend to be personal and I oftentimes share personal events but I am not using our real and complete names and I am no longer using my real picture. Even my birthday is already hidden. No, Joyzi, I have no criminal record at the NBI or something. I am just being careful and I hope that everyone will do the same.(less)

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Jun 13, 2011

Catherine Brown (c4thb) rated it

· review of another edition

A very different Deaver novel indeed. After reading the sleeping doll I was really looking forward to the next Kathryn Dance in the series. I found that Deaver has adopted an entirely different approach to this novel. There is obviously a huge amount of research gone into the storyline on web blogs and on-line RPG games and the accuracy and information was impressive, but I wonder if Deaver has spent too much time on these aspects and not enough time on concentrating on the twists in the plot...more

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Oct 23, 2010

Kathi-sass rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: crime-thriller, read-2010

Having read several other books by Jeffery Deaver I find myself guessing parts of the storyline development correctly well in advance. This means that in this book I was able to gess some of the twists and I wasn't as surprised by the rest of them as I was while reading previous Deaver books. I still enjoyed reading this, there was enough suspense left to want me to keep going, even though I prefer the Lincoln Rhyme series. It's not one of Deaver's best books, but still worth reading and I do re...more

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Jul 11, 2009

Lori rated it

Shelves: 2009july

Deaver is one of those authors I don't tend to look for on my own, but I read if the MIL leaves one behind. She recommended this one as we headed out the door to Mexico, so I brought it with.

I'm not sure if I've read any of the standalone Dance books before. (I'm pretty sure she figures in a Lincoln Rhyme story I've read.) And the character was fine for me (though I missed the bitchiness of Rhyme and snark of Sachs), but the schooling was way too much.

Dance is a kinesist...more

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Oct 30, 2011

Dodol Surodol rated it

I love Deaver, though I find him prone to glossing over stuff to go for effects.

Crosses is all right. I saw the "twists" well in advance -- perhaps because I've read many of Deaver's books -- but it was still an enjoyable read. The blog connection intrigued me in the beginning, but I guess this is really not a novel for those who spend many hours online. The made-up virtual conversations are clunky and the l33tspeak feels forced. Then you have the many pages of blogging and g...more

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Oct 29, 2010

Giuseppe rated it

· review of another edition

Per me è stato in un certo senso buffo leggere, in un romanzo di un un autore di cui ho letto tutto o quasi, una storia ambientata tra definizioni di Castronova, blog, cyberbullismo e MMORPG.

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About Jeffery Deaver

Jeffery Deaver was born outside of Chicago in 1950. His father was an advertising copywriter and his mother was a homemaker. Deaver worked as a magazine writer, then, to gain the background needed to become a legal correspondent for The New York Times or Wall Street Journal, he enrolled at Fordham Law School. In 1990 he started to write full time. Deaver has been nominated for six Edgar Awards fro...more

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“She believed not in divine salvation but in the proposition that we poor mortals are fully capable of saving ourselves, if conditions and inclinations are right, and the evidence of this potential is found in the smallest of gestures, like the uncertain resting of a large hand on a bony shoulder.” — 5 people liked it

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