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's "The Sleeping Doll" takes us far away from the New York of Lincoln Rhyme (although he has a cameo) to the Central California coast. Featuring Kathryn Dance (she turned up in the Rhyme novel "The Cold Moon"), who's an expert at kinesics (body language)--at one point, she's referred to as the "human lie detector"--Deaver takes us far from Rhyme's forensics to a more intuitive branch of the science of deduction.

When convicted murderer Daniel Pell (a Charles Manson enthusiast) is brought to her for questioning about another murder, Dance quickly figures out what's going on, but Pell escapes, and the rest of the book's a manhunt for him. Key to the tale is Theresa Croyden, the "sleeping doll" of the title, who--then eight--was found alive sleeping in her bed when Pell murdered the rest of the family. Dance wants to interview her to find out what she remembers. And while the hunt for Pell is going on, so is the hunt for Theresa.

The book has the usual Deaver touches--knowledge of police procedure, expert placement of clues, constant changes of mood (when bad things seem about to happen often they don't, and the reverse), and lots of action. But it's strangely bloated--by Deaver standards, anyway. Maybe in his attempt to portray real families (Dance is a widow with two children and with both her parents alive) living in an area far from the artificial families New York singles create in their New York moments, he devoted too much time to fleshing them out.

And even the surprise twists that Deaver's famous for didn't come as all that much of a surprise to me in this case. When the tale seemed "done" with about 50 pages left to go, I pretty much figured out how those loose ends were going to be tied up, and maybe you will too.

In The Sleeping Doll, a convicted killer and leader of a cult, Daniel Pell has escaped prison. It is up to the novel's main protagonist, Kathryn Dance, an agent with the California Bureau of Investagation, to track him down. Kathryn is an expert in kinesics - an ability to read body lanuage and behaviour.

I found this book quite a fairly enjoyable read. The cast of characters is quite solid, with the manipulative Daniel Pell, making an interesting, formidable and creepy villian. The character of Kathryn Dance is quite well thought out, also.

I would not cast storyline as a page turner. It is action packed in some parts, slow in others. The story has the usual Jeffery Deaver twists, that you may not see coming if you have not read any of this author's novels before. If you have, they may not come as such of a suprise. Overall, not a bad read, but not as good as the Lincoln Rhyme novels.

Could not find the magic Mr Deaver gives to his twisted plots, in the sleeping doll. He keeps doing what he has been doing in his latest books, no twist and turns the way I like and the unveiling of the mystery in the last chapters, the pace was in a way slow, to the point that I could guess that he had an ace under the sleeve with a given character. I was neither thrilled nor enthralled with this story

The back of the book sounded very intriguing but I was hugely disappointed when I started reading it. I struggled through the first 100 pages before finally giving up. There is no mystery involved and little action takes place. I didn't want to waste my time on a book where the whole premise was a cat and mouse game and where there was no real mystery. After reading the other reviews here, I'm glad I put it down.

Full of twist, turns and suprises. It is one of the best books I've read in a long time, though a bit too wordy, otherwise an excellent book. I thought Katherine and Michael were great lead characters. The tension between the two -- romance but can't because he's married -- made the book much more interesting. I can't wait for the second Katherine Dance book.