Roadside Crosses

Roadside Crosses – Jeffery Deaver

I’m not sure if I like the Kathryn Dance novels as much as I like the Lincoln Rhyme ones.  This is my second Dance novel (although she was introduced to readers as a supporting player in an earlier Rhyme book) and although I welcomed her with enthusiasm originally, I’m now not sure how it might work out in future novels.  I don’t have a problem with <I>her</I> at all, yet it’s her “gift” that doesn’t translate particularly well.

For Kathryn Dance, she’s an expert in the field of kinesics, the study of body language and nonverbal communication.  In other words, she’s so dang good at what she does, she can tell if a person is being deceitful after having a five-minute conversation with them.  What I have found is that Deaver will use Dance, along with her gift, when he needs to quickly advance the plot in a certain direction.  It always seems a tad contrived.  Dance interrogates a subject.  She knows the subject is lying.  The subject eventually breaks down and confesses, tells her the real truth, and the plot can then advance.

This, in itself, is not necessarily a bad thing, but what I found myself asking was “If she can do this with everyone, how is it that key people in the story seem to escape her scrutiny under her radar?”  If you know Jeffery Deaver, you know that nothing in his stories is as it seems.  Every time you’re sure the story is going in the direction that it should be proceeding, Deaver will throw you a hard curve ball, and the people that were presumably guilty were actually innocent all along. So then, some of the people that you thought were innocent, were the ones that were actually committing the crimes the whole time under our nose.

Since these individuals are key players, why can’t Dance use her expertise in kinesics to uncover their behaviors earlier on in the story?  Sure, all of us are duped by Deaver’s 180 degree turns, but Kathryn Dance is supposed to be better than that.  This left me a bit cold.  Of course, like Lincoln Rhyme, we get to learn all sorts of nuances about Dance including her troubled past, her current family, her single motherhood, her dating partners, etc. etc. etc.  This is supposed to enrich the story, but I thought it gummed up the works a bit too much.

This is the third Jeffery Deaver novel that I have read where the main character is the computer.  Or, more specifically, how people can use a computer to achieve evil motives – either intentionally or unintentionally.  This story explores two facets of such technology.  The first is how people get lost in their own virtual words by becoming virtual characters and spending their entire lives being lost in their fantasy world.  It seems as though such a world is much better than their real world.  Unfortunately, after a while, such individuals lose sight and have trouble distinguishing the real world from their fantasy world.

The other facet is something that has become all too common over the last few years (this story was written in 2009, when such a phenomenon was in its infancy) and that is using the online community to argue with complete strangers on blogs and avenues such as social media.  People can get ugly when they hide under the anonymity of the world wide web.  If you don’t believe me, try this:  next time there’s a story on one of the major news sites such as CNN and/or FOX that focuses on either politics or religion, take a few minutes to view the “comments” section at the bottom of the story.  People get real ugly and real nasty with each other in a hurry.  Personally, I can easily avoid this, but even on my Facebook page, I have friends that can’t seem to resist posting links to jabs about their least favorite political personality.  I’ve never quite understood this behavior.

Anyway, all of this to say that in this story, there are negative things posted on a particular blog that is hosted by a local resident.  The atmosphere is so negative that someone is out murdering people.  That’s really all you need to know about the plot.  Dance and her team must put a stop to it.  As we “learn” about these behaviors, the author’s descriptions and examples of such behavior are pretty juvenile.  Real people don’t act like these characters in this story – even when these real people are in non-real worlds.  Since the episodes he writes about were still somewhat of a novelty back in 2009, I can give him a bit of a pass for this.

Not one of my favorite Deaver books, but it was still a page turner, and I can’t help but wonder if part of the problem is that I’ve read about 15 Deaver books in the past 3 years.  Maybe I just need a break.  Good book, but he’s done much better.