XO

XO – By Jefferey Deaver

Kayleigh Townes is a young, up and coming country-western singer superstar. She oozes sweetness to her fans, and those who write to her get a sweet, formal thank you note from Kayleigh.  One fan, though, misinterprets this communication. He falls in love with the girl and becomes a Grade A stalker. Of course, he’s told to stop by her management, and she even hires a personal security guard, but this guy really hasn’t done anything harmful to her, he’s just…well…creepy.

Then tragic accidents start to happen to Kayleigh’s friends and work associates. Her friend Katherine Dance is called in to help. Those who know Jefferey Deaver know Katherine Dance.  She’s a PI with a specialty in kinesics – the ability to expertly read body language and paraverbal communication. Dance can usually tell in a second when someone is being truthful or giving her the runaround.

So far, this book has been my favorite Katherine Dance novel. In some of the previous works, it seemed like Deaver would use her expertise as a cheap way to move the plot forward.  How do we get the story from ‘Point A’ to ‘Point B’? Well, how about we have Katherine ‘interrogate’ someone, catch them lying, accuse them of lying, and have them break down in tears after they’ve finally revealed the truth?  Fortunately, Deaver uses Dance’s abilities sparingly here. In fact, I also felt that this story didn’t really need to be a Katherine Dance novel. The story could have worked just as well if Deaver had invented a one-time investigator.

It is definitely a Deaver novel, though.  After bad things start happening to Kayleigh’s cohorts, obviously everyone points the finger at the stalker (named Edwin), but we must always remember that with Deaver, nothing is what it seems, and his stories always end up being twisted shockers with numerable plot twists.  Usually these twists work quite well.  There have been some Deaver novels that I didn’t think were that good – until I got to the last 100 pages and saw what was REALLY going on.

Strangely, this book almost had the opposite effect.  I really enjoyed the first ¾ of the book, but when the plot twists arrived, I found some of them to be rather silly and forced. A lot of that could be due to the fact that Deaver’s plot twists don’t work that well for his well-versed fans.  We KNOW something sneaky is just around the corner, so we constantly have our guard up. So when the boogie man finally appears, we just jump up slightly as opposed to leaping through the roof.

Deaver is also well known for his meticulous research into his subject matter, and I’m thinking this book might be his crowning achievement.  Since the key player here is a music star, Deaver shares with us many of the ins and outs of the business – with a key focus on how much the business has changed as of late (streaming music, no physical sales of product, illegal file sharing, etc.) All of this is great, but Deaver doesn’t stop there – he even includes lyrics to all of the ‘songs’ on Kayleigh’s latest ‘album’ at the end of the book!  And then…..get this…..from what I hear, there is actually a literal recording of this album out there.  A bit overboard if you ask me, but you can’t help but be impressed with Deaver’s drive.

This one was a strong addition to his collection, and, while reading, I found myself having a strong urge to keep going and not but the book down for the day.