Kathryn Dance Book 2 (Kathryn Dance thrillers) - Roadside Crosses

I look forward to every book by Jeffrey Deaver but this one I would rate a 3-star and barely that. Too much techno crap and too weak a story. It could have been a great read except for all the extraneous stuff about "gaming" and blogs. I really don't see how this tecno babble lent anything to the plot except in a limited way. It could have been inserted with a limited narrative and to complement the story line. It didn't do that...in my opinion it overwhelmed the story line. The main characters even seemed bored.

I have contacted the seller twice regarding the fact I haven't received this book yet. As of today no one has bothered to contact me in any way. If this is the way Kurlybooks does business, I would suggest you buy elsewhere.

Jeffrey Deaver always brings it with a good story, but while this is a decently good read, it's not one of his best.

Kathryn Dance is the kinesics, or “body language” expert for the California Bureau of Investigation. She can “read” people and tell if they are lying, AND what kind of liar they are. She uses this in her investigations and especially interrogations. The case to which she's just been assigned is a serial killer who is leaving crosses at the roadsides, with the date of the death—BEFORE he kills them.

The clues lead Kathryn and her team to Travis Brigham, a teen obsessed with online role-playing games. Travis was involved in a car accident where two girls died. Although he was not cited for a criminal act (no drinking involved, appeared to have simply lost control of the vehicle), the community is against him and baying for blood. A popular local blog calls for more investigation into the incident, especially for officials to look into road safety in that area—and it turns into a no-holds-barred attack on Travis from multiple posters. Everyone has heard rumors that they KNOW are true: Travis is a Satanist, he stalks women, he's crazy. When Travis disappears and the killings and attempted killings ramp up, Kathryn knows she must find him before it's too late. But how do you find someone who has spent 8 hours a day online, studying fighting and survival and advanced evasion techniques?

One of the reasons that this book is not quite as good as most of Deaver's work is not really the book's fault—it has a lot of information about blogs and online gaming and like any fiction book that has the internet as part of the plot, it is VERY dated. When one character carefully explains to Kathryn what blogs are, how they were invented, their history, etc, it completely ruins the building tension of the storyline because it's sooo not necessary to explain that to anyone in the world reading this book. “Oh my gosh, a “blog” you say? Short for “weblog”? And people write stuff and post it online? And anyone can read it? How crazy and innovative!” Lol. There was information about how there was a huge war going on between computer blog purists who thought all blogs should be about computers, and the other bloggers, who thought blogs should be about anything you want. Also the blogger in this story was considered incredibly influential because he posted his opinion on things like highway safety, new construction projects, etc. And he refused to take it down even though the people commenting were being killed. This all was hard to believe. Sort of a plot hole that if his motivation was that his egotistical thoughts were sooo important that his message must go out—why not just close the posts to comments? Problem solved! Pretty sure that all blog software that lets people post comments also has the option of NOT letting them. The last part that was sort of hard to believe was that all the teenagers would be reading his blog and commenting on it. Yes, because teens love nothing more than posting on adults' blogs about new construction and stuff.

When I'm reading a book, I want to believe what's happening, it needs to be believable while I'm reading the book. I want to be lost in the story. So it's annoying when something comes along that throws me out of the story, and that happens a lot in this book because of the outdated technology.

The other problem I had with the book was that Deaver tried to cram too much into the last bit—the first 7/8 of the book is building up suspense and then it's like he realized it was going to finish at too many pages, or he ran out of time or something. The last few chapters were like “and then this happened. And then THIS happened. And THIS!” So it seemed sort of unfulfilling and almost cobbled together.

Overall, it was still a book that mostly held my attention, just the ending didn't quite live up to the rest.

The second book in author Jeffery Deaver's Kathryn Dance series of thrillers, "Roadside Crosses", was a pretty good read. Coming in at over 540 pages this one takes time to get through reading. The plot is slow to unwind at times, and branches off at unexpected turns. Protagonist Kathryn Dance, a widow works for California's Bureau of Investigation. She's an expert in kinesics, the study of body language to determine a person's likelihood of telling the truth. Dance must investigate a series of cases where a roadside cross will pop up before an actual crime in that location occurs. When high school senior Tammy Foster is kidnapped and left in a car trunk to drown, she saved at the last possible minute. However at the hospital Dance knows Tammy isn't giving her full disclosure. Tammy knows more than what she's telling, and knows who kidnapped her. Before long another classmate of Tammy's, Travis Brigham is fingered as a suspect. It seems Travis was at the center of a horrible car accident that all the kids in school blamed on him. The accident killed two classmates and kids from high school think he crashed on purpose. Surprisingly Dance finds all about this online, primarily from one source. Dance and her team need to investigate "The Chilton Report", an online blog that runs all over the place from far right to far left. The blog allows such a wide range of comments/ opinions that do nothing but make things worse with each passing hour. Pounding on Travis for the accident is a popular sport on the blog. Dance luckily convinces college professor Jon Boling to come help her team with the world of on line gaming. Suspect Travis spends more time in cyber than in the real world. Fighting hardened online "Gamers", hard line first amendment rights bloggers, hard line environmental causes bloggers, teenage social media, and of course greed, Dance has her hands full in this yarn. Also to complicate matters Dance's mother gets arrested for murder. As an ICU nurse Edie Dance is accused of putting a patient out of his misery. So, with "Roadside Crosses", there are constantly many parts in motion moving at various speeds. At times the number of elements in this plot were somewhat overwhelming. I liked the story. However there was just so much to process while trying to enjoy the read. As usual Author Jeffery Deaver had an array of very interesting characters. Deaver is a master of creating some very strange characters indeed. Overall I'm giving this one three stars out of a possible five stars. Having now read the first two books in the Kathryn Dance series, I'm not sure whether or not I like this series. (Character). But for an interesting thriller, and fans of author Jeffery Deaver I'd recommend this one without question.

This is the second book in the Kathryn Dance series follows closely after the events in the first book. They are on the trail of a killer who leaves a cross by the roadside, but not as a memoriam, but as a warning. Kathryn follows the trail to a popular blog and a posting about a tragic road accident involving teens, where the driver has been a target of a nasty string of posts. Thinking that the boy may be the killer/kidnapper, she works to get the blogger to help her to track down his next potential victims but his unwillingness leads her to a computer expert at the local university who volunteers to help out with the case and may become more than a friend for Kathryn. On a personal note, she is in great distress that her mother is being accused of being a mercy killer, leading from events from the case in the prior book. Political intrigue factors into the case, and both stories take many twists and turns before the true killer is revealed.

I just finished Roadside Crosses tonight and it was excellent, as expected. Deaver writes thriller, suspense type novels that have a bit of mystery as well. This book was very exciting and fast-paced; it definitely kept me guessing, intrigued, and engrossed.

I’ll try my best to give a brief summary, despite the story’s complexities. It opens up with a roadside cross being discovered on a highway in California. The roadside cross that was spotted by a police officer was made of tree branches, and had a bouquet of red roses at the bottom of it. In the center was a date to signify the death… however, the date was for tomorrow. Hmm…

As the story evolves, it is discovered that someone is placing roadside crosses as a warning or sign of a murder they will be committing on the date written on the cross, usually today’s date or the following day. The primary suspect is a high school boy, Travis, who has been viciously attacked on a very popular and widely read local blog, The Chilton Report. The blog reported a story in which Travis was blamed for an auto accident, killing two girls. Many of his fellow high school classmates left feedback on the blog, saying horrible things about him. Now that Agent Kathryn Dance, the lead investigator on the case, has suspected him, he has seemed to vanish, but the crosses keep appearing, and people who commented on the blog about Travis continue to be attacked.

I won’t say more about the summary, but this has barely skimmed the surface. There is so much to this story, including many “twists and turns” and surprises. There are many subplots as well that make up a good portion of the story too, including an investigation into Agent Dance’s mother, Edie, a nurse at the local hospital, being accused of committing a mercy killing on a patient.

I love Jeffery Deaver’s novels, and this book was not a disappointment. The only thing I found negative about the book is that there is a lot going on and it can be a bit confusing at times. However, it all comes together at the end… just pay close attention! His books are very exciting and realistic crime stories. He knows his stuff too, as he used to be a lawyer. His books are quick paced and a ton of fun to read. As a supplement to the book, Deaver even created a Chilton Report blog, which is pretty neat. I would highly recommend this book. I was never really into the thriller/suspense genre until I started reading his books. I would also recommend his bestseller, The Bodies Left Behind, which I read a few months ago and also really enjoyed.

Teenager Tammy Foster is kidnapped in a club parking lot. Trussed up with duct tape and tossed in the trunk of her own Camry, the car is driven into the surf of the rising Pacific. Fortunately for her, the murderer miscalculated, and instead of drowning, the car bobs around until she's rescued.

In her hospital bed, Tammy is interviewed by Kathryn Dance, California Bureau of Investigation. Tammy tells the investigator that her kidnappers were a Hispanic man with a friend. Unfortunately for her, Kathryn is an expert in kinesics, the study of body language. Kathryn knows Tammy is lying big time. With Michael O'Neil, Monterey County Sheriff's Office, Kathryn has to figure out if Tammy is protecting somebody or scared silent. Especially since Tammy isn't the last victim.

"Roadside Crosses" is a very average book. This was disappointing to me, as I had just finished Jeffery Deaver's "Garden of Beasts: A Novel of Berlin 1936", and enjoyed it so much I jumped right into "Roadside Crosses". The latter has a surprise twist in the plot 2/3 of the way through (just as in the Berlin book), but the transition is clunky. The personal life of the protagonists slow down the plot too much. Most important, though, is that the police work just didn't seem realistic. Maybe that's just because I didn't become attached to anyone in the book while reading it.

I'm not giving up on Jeffery Deaver, but I'll wait a bit before trying another one. According to the book jacket, "Roadside Crosses" is the third in Deaver's High-Tech Thriller Trilogy, the first two being "The Blue Nowhere" and "The Broken Window".

Happy Reader

Roadside Crosses is my first experience with Kathryn Dance, Jeffery Deaver's newest series heroine. She's an agent with the California Bureau of Investigation (which I'm familiar with because of The Mentalist, one of my favorite television shows). Her skills lie in kinesics, the skill of reading a person through body language. She's also a young widow, a single mom with two kids, and a strained relationship with her mom.

I haven't read The Sleeping Doll or The Cold Moon, the Lincoln Rhyme novel that introduced Dance, but I'm going back for them.

Deaver likes to learn things, then explain them to his audience through scintillating characters and viciously twisting plots. He did a fantastic job with The Blue Nowhere, a standalone novel about the world of computer hacking.

With its emphasis on social networking, blogs, and the rise of independent journalism on the internet, Roadside Crosses should have dipped easily into the cyberworld. Deaver calls it the "synth world" for synthetic, artificial, and part of the book's premise lies in video games as well as successful blogging.

Unfortunately, I wasn't really happy with the depiction of the "synth world" or its participants. The video game was obviously based on World of Warcraft, and WOW was mentioned a few times throughout the course of the novel with surprising fact I didn't know. (Like the virus that ran throughout WOW that eventually ended up getting studied by Atlanta's Center for Disease Control because the digital threat ended up spreading just like a real virus. Really cool stuff that sent me scrambling to the computer to look up.) Deaver is a master researcher, and he thinks outside the box as well. These "synth world" characters just didn't have the heart I'd been hoping for. A lot of normal people game too.

The plot in this novel is twisting and ever-changing. I liked the premise and believe we will see this kind of thing happening in the near future, which is scary. The Chilton Report is a social diatribe written by Jim Chilton, who has become a force in blogging. Dance and her team gets pulled into the investigation after the near murder of a young girl that responded to one of Chilton's post about a controversial car wreck that took the lives of two teens.

Dance (and most readers) get a tour of the online world and blogs, and the plot swiftly develops into an avalanche of intrigues. More people who have written into the Chilton Report also get attacked, and the culprit is apparently Travis, the young man behind the wheel of the wrecked car. He'd been under attack for deaths of the two teens for weeks. On the surface, it appears that he's snapped and is lashing out.

Of course, since I've been reading Deaver for years, I knew that easy answer was not going to be the answer. At least, not until I'd been swayed in several directions if that was what he'd had in mind. As a writer, Deaver delights in misdirection.

Two subplots involve Dance's mother getting accused of a mercy killing and a potential romantic relationship blossoming. Both are interesting.

I stayed with Deaver throughout the book, following each feint and parry of the plot. However, the ending of this one seemed to go on forever. Interesting, true, but extended in some strange way for no reason that I could see. Maybe there was just too much to explain. Also, I wasn't happy with the way things got resolved. The main plot and the subplot involving Dance's mother just came out of nowhere in a way, and was tied up without a lot of real tension. In fact, the main plot ends, then loops back around for another lap to bring everything to a head.

This book hasn't broken my faith in Deaver, but I know that the reveals could have been better paced. Don't know why they weren't. I enjoy Kathryn Dance, her work and her life, so I'll be signing on for both past adventures as well as the next one.

ROADSIDE CROSSES, Jeffery Deaver's latest novel, offers a bit of a departure from the work of one of thriller fiction's most unpredictable and reliable practitioners. It marks both the return of Kathryn Dance, last seen in THE SLEEPING DOLL, and a continuation of that book, tying up one major loose end left over from its predecessor and creating a number of new ones.

The novel takes place over the course of an extremely busy and deadly five-day workweek that sees Dance challenged personally and professionally on a number of different levels. After a young woman is kidnapped and left to drown in the trunk of a car, a roadside cross commemorating the event is found nearby. The incident is tied to a prior automobile accident in which two high school students were killed. Travis Brigham, a social outcast among his peers, admitted to driving the car involved in the fatal crash. A posting about the accident on The Chilton Report, an immensely popular Internet blog, has resulted in a flurry of online attacks against Brigham, which have grown increasingly incendiary. When the kidnapping occurs, it appears that Brigham is retaliating against the online attacks; as more take place, the Monterey area is thrown into a panic.

In her capacity as a senior agent with the California Bureau of Investigation, Dance is brought into the mix when an area-wide manhunt for Brigham commences, and her skills as a body-language expert are brought to bear during witness interviews. Dance comes to learn that Brigham is immersed in the world of online reality gaming, and appears to be blurring the distinction between the violence of the online world he inhabits and the real world. It is imperative that Dance locates Brigham, who can seemingly appear and vanish at will, but she has a couple of major distractions. The largest concerns the death of Juan Millar, which occurred at the conclusion of THE SLEEPING DOLL. In the midst of Dance's own investigation, her mother, a nurse at the hospital where Millar died, is inexplicably charged with his murder.

Meanwhile, Dance finds herself in the crosshairs of a bureaucratic investigation, with her boss pinning the bullseye right on her forehead. To make matters worse, Monterey County Sheriff Michael O'Neil, who frequently works with Dance, is suddenly unavailable to help her on the Brigham case. As matters rapidly reach a frightening conclusion, Dance finds that she is placing herself and her colleagues in danger from sources both known and unexpected, even as she slowly begins to face the possibility that her own mother may be a killer.

ROADSIDE CROSSES contains a number of examples of Deaver's classic methods of misdirection. Interestingly enough, however, he relies less on those tried and true plot elements and more upon straightforward, but no less fascinating, police work. For those unfamiliar with blogging and online gaming, this book will be a real eye-opener into both worlds. And if you are reading solely for his clever diversions, never fear; Deaver still peppers his plot with plenty of surprises, particularly at the conclusion, when they come quickly and furiously. And loose ends? There is at least one waiting at the end, which will be resolved in the next Kathryn Dance novel, scheduled for release in 2011. For now, ROADSIDE CROSSES will keep Deaver's fans spellbound.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

In "Roadside Crosses," Jeffrey Deaver examines the Internet's "cult of anonymity," as Richard Bernstein of the New York Times calls it. Deaver focuses, in particular, on blogs that furnish "a blanket sort of immunity for anybody who wants to say anything about anybody else...." James Chilton, whose blog, "The Chilton Report," is extremely popular, calls himself "the moral voice of America." He uses his forum to fight hypocrisy, corruption, and greed; however, his blog also becomes a platform for vicious personal attacks. One particular target is a high school junior named Travis Brigham, whom a number of posters blame for a tragic car accident that took the lives of two teenage girls. Brigham becomes the chief suspect when several people who flamed him on Chilton's blog are physically assaulted.

Deaver's heroine is Kathryn Dance, an attractive woman in her thirties who works for the California Bureau of Investigation. A former reporter with a background in communications and psychology, she is a human lie detector who uses her knowledge of body language to discern when a witness is making something up, hiding or distorting what he knows, or is just plain stressed out. Dance, a widow with two children, has feelings for Michael O'Neil the married chief deputy in the Monterey County Sheriff's Office Investigation Division, with whom she has a close professional relationship.

Dance is called in when an unknown assailant kidnaps seventeen-year-old Tammy Foster in downtown Monterey, ties her up and then tosses her into her car trunk, leaving her to drown in high tide. Bizarrely, a roadside cross with flowers had been stuck in the sand along a local highway the day before the abduction, leading police to believe that whoever committed the crime was telegraphing his intentions in advance. Who is the perpetrator, what is his motive, and will he strike again? Dance's boss is the politically-minded Charles Overby, the agent in charge of the CBI branch, who is more concerned with his image in the media and the approval of his superiors than he is with boosting the morale of his dedicated staff. Dance and her team work around Overby in an effort to stop a crime spree that soon spirals out of control.

Jeffrey Deaver is skilled at juggling a large cast of characters and a multilayered plot; the reader is instantly hooked, sensing that there is more going on here than meets the eye. Dance is a strong and determined detective who finds herself attracted to a new man in her life--Dr. Jonathan Boling, a professor in UC Santa Cruz who volunteers to contribute his formidable computer skills to help Dance and her team. One of the author's themes is that the Internet is a powerful tool that, in the wrong hands, can be used to destroy innocent people's reputations. As the aforementioned Richard Bernstein says, "It would be difficult ... to think of a more morally deformed exploitation of the concept of free speech." For those who enjoy computer-speak, Deaver provides a great deal of fascinating information about life in cyberspace. As a police procedural, however, this novel takes an unfortunate nosedive towards the end, with too many implausible twists and turns. Still, Deaver is a proven master at crafting page-turners, and until the very end, this blend of romance, suspense, and family drama will hold you captive.

Kathryn Dance - the body-language expert who works as an agent for the fictional California Bureau of Investigation - is back in top form.

Someone's committing a string of assaults and murders, and broadcasting his intent ahead of time by erecting roadside "memorials" to his victims before killing them. The victims seem to have one commonality among them: they've all posted comments on a popular blog that's based in the Monterey area. And many of those comments are directed against a teen misfit who was involved in a fatal traffic accident in the recent past. The evidence seems to indicate that the teen is getting his payback.

Dance and her team must deal with agency politics, as well as plumb the cyberworld of blogging and gaming, as they try to uncover the truth of what's happening and locate the teen who's gone missing while the crime rampage continues.

Deaver has a terrific talent for creating unique and intriguing characters like Lincoln Rhyme and Kathryn Dance. This book is further populated with fully-realized players in all the supporting roles, as well as conveying a great sense of the beautiful setting of California's Central Coast region.

Another real treat was his exploration of the world of online role-playing games. If you're a gamer, you'll especially enjoy this, as he does it so well. It was simply fascinating! And if you're not a gamer, you'll still enjoy your introduction to that milieu, as he did it so well.

The real piece de resistance was that this book's a terrific "whodunit". I was sure I'd figured out the whole thing about halfway through... and I was dead wrong! The ending was a complete surprise.

Five stars, fully earned. A truly fun read.

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 in kinesics (body language to the rest of us).

Deaver is a retired attorney & he builds a plot much like I imagine you build a case - step by step, bit by bit - in his novels he deals the cards to you one by one until you get the whole picture. He is also the master of the unexpected twist. He does this better than anyone I've ever read - throwing a monkey wrench into what you thought was going on & forcing you to look at everything from another perspective. I've often thought he should consider a third a career as an illusionist because he's just that good at misdirection.

This was an enjoyable novel combining additional character development with a great story that features the world of blogs & MMORPG's - two things I like an awful lot. He manages to write about the virtual world (or synth world, as he calls it) without sounding like a complete n00b - that tells me he actually researches what he's writing & listens to the experts he consults (another really great quality in a human being). A fun, smart read.

Jeffrey Deaver never ceases to amaze me. I love the research he puts into each novel, the way he forces you to think in one direction while he's off doing something else. That's Roadside Crosses. Kathryn Dance finds herself forced to move outside the realm of her expertise to solve a puzzle that makes Rubik's Cube look like a child's toy.

Crosses start appearing, and after their appearance a murder. What kind of warped mind would broadcast what he or she was doing in advance like that? We are drawn into a world of moral accountability, social outcasts, virtual worlds where the line between our world and the virtual world become blurred, even when not working on the computer. To solve this one Dance must rethink everything she has learned about kinesics (reading body language). In the last 2 appearances her keen abilities in reading people have helped her greatly. Now the rules have been changed, the body language she's seeing may not be saying what it normally mean. She needs to get a "baseline" and to do that she turns to a "gamer" (RPG).

I've seen some poor reviews on this book, but you know, I think it's his best yet. I just wonder how he keeps getting better. Deaver is a far cry from some of the other "big name" mystery writers whose novels seem like they're pumped out by a team of writers working off the same script. Deaver's works are always unique.

David Brollier
author of The 3rd Covenant
[...]

Logic and Intuition, one or the other, is how Kathryn Dance solves the crimes she investigates. The California Bureau of Investigation Special Agent, in the third in the series featuring the body-language expert, faces a murder mystery involving the cyberworld of games and blogs. And her skill in going from A to B to X is largely clouded by a shrewd killer and the complete lack of credible clues.

A young teenager becomes the target of countless postings on a blog criticizing him for driving a car that crashed, killing two young girls. As the attacks mount, he disappears and various persons who posted comments on the web are attacked or murdered after crosses are planted on the previous day on the sides of roads.

This reader having just finished another novel involving computer games, which was much shorter and more concise, the overwhelming detail in Crosses, while to some degree necessary, was a bit much. As well, composed with the author's accustomed ability to provide twists and surprises, the plot and development seemed to be extremely contrived. Despite these shortcomings, the novel was surprisingly interesting, and, of course, being a Jeffery Deaver book, well-written.

This is the first Jeffery Deaver novel I have read, and I was up all night reading it. From the first page on, the twists and unexpected turns kept me reading through most of the book before finally falling asleep.

Body language expert Kathryn Dance has much to learn about the cyberspace, and has an able teacher in newcomer Jonathon Boling. As they race to find out who is trying to kill the mean girls of The Chilton Report website, the killer seems always to be a step or two ahead.

Sheriff's Deputy Mike O'Neil is back to help Kathryn out. The two have a great comraderie, and seem to work as one when on a case. Kathryn certainly needs all the help she can get with this case. Not only that, she also investigates a mercy killing that hits a little too close to home.

This book takes on the question of whether bloggers should be held accountable when they don't tell the truth and adverse actions cause harm as a result. Deaver certainly did his homework with authentic detail and a riveting storyline.

Looking forward in anticipation to the fourth Kathryn Dance offering.

Roadside Crosses: A Kathryn Dance Novel

Jeffrey Deaver knows how to write a thriller, and I have followed him for a number of years. His Kathryn Dance series is a little different though because he goes into the fascinating field of kinesiology. That's what Dance does - she reads people's involuntary speech and behaviour patterns, and uses this to separate the truth from lies. This book also steps wholeheartedly into the cyber world. The world of blogging, instant messaging and gaming is discussed in detail in this book. Deaver provides a unique insight into the teen world of cyberspace, and gives us a good idea of what synth life is like. The lines between reality and synth are shifting all the time, and it is so easy for young people these days to get totally taken up in synth, and then they can't separate that from reality. This book is full of twists and turns as Dance and her team try to track down the Roadside Cross Killer who appears to be a teenage boy who seems to totally exist in synth. Dance and her immediate team get drawn into a macabre world where reality blurs and gets lost somewhere in cyber space. This is an excellent book.

ROADSIDE CROSSES is Jeffrey Deaver's follow-up to THE SLEEPING DOLL, a novel featuring CBI agent and body language expert Kathryn Dance. THE SLEEPING DOLL was a really good book despite the fact that the final twist was silly. The sequel fails to match in anyway the expectations set for it by the first book.

ROADSIDE CROSSES has a fascinating premise. A killer is leaving crosses on the side of the road in memorial to people that have died. Except, the crosses are for people who haven't been killed yet. I was disappointed that the crosses have really nothing to do with the novel except in a passing fashion. A few weeks ago, Travis Brigham was the driver of a car that had a wreck and killed two passengers. Mourners left roadside crosses, and a blogger named James Chilton wrote a blog about it. On that blog, classmates began attacking Brigham. This is what the novel is all about. Chilton and his blog and online threats. As more people keep dying, Dance, married partner Michael O'Neil and friends try to find out what is motivating Travis and where he will strike next.

The good: Despite my complaints about the story, Deaver has crafted some characters that are intersesting. That is half the battle and means I'll read the promised third book in the series.

The not so good: Deaver tried to do a lot of things with this novel and failed with most of them. First, he set up a great premise about roadside crosses being left at grave sites, then abandoned it as a feature of the story. Second, he seemed to want to tackle the issue of how vulnerable we are considering how much we put about ourselves online, but never seemed to find focus. He brings up role playing games, message boards, blogs and personal networking, but none of it really seems realistic (especially the blogs), even though the novel is current. Third, there is an absurd sublot involving Dance's mom related to THE SLEEPING DOLL that does nothing to advance the plot, but does play a part in the character arc.

In thrillers of this type, the author can choose to write from the villain's point of view, which he did so effectively in THE SLEEPING DOLL. In ROADSIDE CROSSES, Deaver never writes from the killer's point of view, so most of the crimes committed didn't make since. As the novel takes its typical twists and turns, some of it begins to make more sense, but its a case of too little too late. I think Deaver tried to do too much with this novel, and created a novel that had some good parts, but none of them really connected to make a good whole.

Deaver mines fertile ground for this thriller, the internet, where an astute and committed blogger creates a lively venue for his audience in Monterey County, California, to vent their concerns on politics, local interests and, most recently, a terrible accident that takes the life of two teenaged girls. The driver of the car, sixteen-year-old Travis Bingham, is the focus of a raging flame war, especially when the surviving girl is attacked by someone in a hoodie, the act memorialized by a roadside cross strewn with red roses. These crosses become harbingers of death, each new attack marked by another cross with the date of each new tragedy. Bloggers' fingers are flying on their keyboards, all eyes on Travis, an online gamer that has disappeared into the murky space between reality and cyber role playing, his avatar reappearing occasionally before vanishing again. Meanwhile, the bodies and crosses proliferate.

Kinesics expert Kathryn Dance of the California Bureau of Investigation has the unenviable task of locating this ubiquitous young villain before he strikes again, her efforts thwarted by Travis's remarkable ability to hide from authorities while the crimes escalate, as do the iconic roadside crosses. Since it all began on The Chilton Report, Dance acquaints herself with the man behind the blog and the communication methods of the internet savvy, where anonymity reigns and panic grows with each new body and cross. Lots of information here for the uninitiated, from cyber-bullying to tracking blogger ID's to the nebulous realm of gaming aficionados and their avatars. Unfortunately, the implied threats of the blog translate into murder in the physical world Dance inhabits. Feints and false clues abound, a variety of characters as agendas, cyber world an attractive alternative to the murder, greed and betrayal law enforcement faces in Monterey County.

From flame wars on Chilton's blog to the gruesome crime scenes, Dance hops nimbly from one reality to another in pursuit of Travis, who has attained mythological proportions along the way. Deaver's educational forays into the intricacies of the internet, blogs, an entire generation obsessed with gaming, and the depersonalization of society is far more fascinating than the dead bodies left in the wake of the roadside crosses, but there are plenty of other real-time problems, a suspected mercy killing, a controversial desalinization plant, local politics and a potential terrorist threat to keep Dance on her toes while Travis lurks in his cyber hideout. There's lots of activity in this unruly thriller, perhaps too ambitious, sometimes compelling and often confusing as villains and cops collide. Luan Gaines/2009.

No one reads Jeffery Deaver expecting a straightforward plot and Roadside Crosses is as tangled as most of his books, though perhaps even less likely. As other reviewers have noted, it features Kathryn Dance, who prides herself on her ability to read body language. She seems self-satisfied and arrogant, continually reviewing the reasons for her conclusions, perhaps because the writer wants to document his research --Myers Briggs profiling, types of liars. Not uninteresting stuff, but badly integrated into the novel. The same is true for the large amount of information about the cyberworld, called, in this book, the synthetic world.

The resolution is curiously unsatisfying. No spoilers here, but the solution comes out of left field as does a radical personality change associated with a central character.

What works? The character of the young man who was accused as the Roadside Cross Killer is presented and then developed, which is Deaver at his best.

Roadside Crosses was my introduction to Jeffrey Deaver and sadly, I have confess this book was barely readable. I have to agree with another reviewer that character development was rather minimal and I found it odd that all the story characters spoke in clipped,fragmented sentences. It was irritating and almost considered quitting this story. The only thing that stopped me was that I bought this book. Some men might speak fragmentedly, but I find it difficult to believe that women, even law enforcement career women like Kathryn Dance speak this way as a general rule. Everyone has their own unique speech & vocabulary patterns when they communicate, but everyone in this story spoke in the same fragmented manner. Implausible! Then there was the endless streams of blogs I had to sift through & other techie information which was very monotonous. Ennui quickly set in after awhile, living inside the head of Kathryn Dance throughout most of this book. There was much too much display of kinesics and processing in this story for me. Kathryn Dance read everyone,kids, friends, co-workers, suspects, witnesses, the dog.....on a 24/7 basis. It made me think Dance is a control freak and way too sensitive about what others think and what their body expressions might convey. Her professional analysis of body reading can assist in investigations, but is insubstantive and an inadequate basis as a primary tool for crime solving. It's a good tool as an aid....but just an aid. I found it hard to believe that a good law enforcement agent can conduct a thorough and factually based investigation solely based on kinesics. Furthermore, I wasn't convinced that Dance could effectively control people on a consistent basis by giving hard looks & or growling commands. Once Dance barked, people backed off. Really? Men,in particular, often challenge the authority of women, yet not one gave her a serious challenge. I guess Dance was talented that way. Ha! I really had a difficult time getting through this book.

Most of the story was dialog so I presume that the author is hoping for Hollywood to buy the screenplay & movie rights for this story.

The author did not appear to "paint" the scenes and just plainly told the reader how things were instead of using the device of powerful or subtle scene descriptions to lead the reader down the path of imagination. It appeared to me, this author wrote this story in a hurried manner to meet a deadline.

Sorry to say, it but this is one of the worst novels I've ever read. Interesting storyline & plot twist but extremely disappointly poor in execution.

Here's my two thumbs down on this book!

A spinoff character from the Lincoln Rhymes mysteries, Katherine Dance is the kinesiologist who solves crimes by reading people’s body language. Her first solo outing takes her into the cyberworld of teen facebooks, blogs and tweets, while roadside crosses in the real world announce deaths before they occur. Deaver, like many of today’s mystery and thriller writers, spends too much time turning the early chapters into primers on technology, but when he gets going, watch out. A dynamite ending puts Dance in peril, and the who in whodunit is a surprise as usual.

When a troubled teenager is pushed over the edge by cyber-bullies, he plots a violent revenge for which he plants roadside crosses throughout the Monterey peninsula, a situation for which body-language expert Kathryn Dance and Monterey County Sheriff's Senior Deputy Michael O'Neil race against the clock to stop the youth from acting on his rage.
But nothing is as it seems in this latest thriller from Jeffery Deaver. This thriller was full of surprises. It impresses upon you the fact that certain blogs can get out of hand with irrational truths. It also brings to light the problems of cyber-bullying, which is all too real.
Overall though, I found this to be just an average thriller. Other than some surprises it didn't have the 'bang' I come to expect.

"There are laws to protect the freedom of the press's speech, but none that are worth anything to protect the people from the press." Mark Twain

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

I have read and enjoyed a number of Jeffrey Deaver books (novels and short stories) but the last few I read left me wishing I could get back those wasted hours. Never mind the reams of clunky exposition, the ridiculous motivation of the (eventually revealed) main villain, the bungling, misguided efforts of the lead investigator; the main story-line of Roadside Crosses contains a gaping plot hole that makes the whole escapade pointless.

Spoiler ... Do not read the rest of this unless you have already read the book, or do not plan to waste your time reading it.

The lead investigator, Kathryn Dance, runs up against roadblocks and frustrations for a good part of the narrative, trying to obtain the real names and addresses of responders on a blog, "The Chilton Report", so she can warn them that they are in danger from Travis Brigham, the (wrongly identified) teen perpetrator who is (supposedly) targeting them for dissing him in the title blog thread ('Roadside Crosses') after he (supposedly) caused the deaths of two other teens in a car crash. Dance uses threats and bribery on Chilton, the blog's creator, tries to get a warrant, etc, but all in vain.

However, not once does she stop to consider how this teen suspect, Brigham, can identify these same 'avatars' to target them as his victims! (for whatever reason--the only victims ARE responders on the blog, so there is obviously a connection.)

Of course if she had considered that then 'Roadside Crosses' would have been a short story, not a novel because the only reasonable answer to that riddle would have led her to the real murderer, the only person who could already have had the access she was trying to obtain, in just a few chapters :)

Another sad trend I'm seeing in recent JD stories is that in an attempt to maintain his 'legendary' plot twists he is making his 'heroes' somewhat stupid. I prefer my detectives to be intelligent investigators, working (mostly) doggedly in the right direction, and any misdirection to be our, the readers', wrong conclusions, not those of stupid investigators following shoals of red herring so that we can get it wrong with them, until--surprise, surprise--they stumble upon the real murderer at the end, just in time to save another of his (or her) intended victims.

I have also grown very weary of the author's, by now thoroughly clichéd, plot tension device of leaving the POV of a victim, just about to suffer or die at the hands of a villain, as the scene shifts, only to return later to expose an unlikely, nick-of-time rescue.

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, and this time again in charge of an investigation as leading lady.

The premise was actually engaging - someone is leaving a series of roadside crosses to predict a death, not commemorate one. However, that thread was virtually abandoned, as was Dance's claim to fame (kinetic analysis) as 90% of the book was Deaver railing about the dominance of blogging in today's internet sphere, and how dangerous and silly that "unregulated" activity can be. The plot was poorly crafted, the bulk of the story was boring, and Dance has no better skills at running a "straight" investigation than the average reader.

We are longtime Deaver fans, even of his early works under his pseudonym William Jeffries. But we conclude from this mediocre outing that Dance as a supporting helper is far more interesting than having her trudge through an entire case only rarely using her unique talents. Moreover, we don't need Deaver to labor over an expose of blogging or anything else on the internet - we see enough of that stuff (willingly or not!) online, we don't need it in our books !!

So much rushing around by so many characters to such little purpose. We are supposedly getting lots of information on the blogosphere, about what you might get in 1/2 an hour on, say Wikipedia. But all is given breathlessly as if it represents some type of major insight. The heroine, Dance, is apparantly some type of body language expert (I think Deaver uses a technical sounding term but I forget it). Mainly she sees dark motivations in the blinking of an eye. Somehow in the Lincoln Rhymes series I managed to ignore the vaguely ludicrous aspect of his supposed skills and their applications, in this case I cannot.

I'm not sure how this is going to turn out, I suspect powerful big-time baddies are behind it all. I expect I'll skip to the last few pages and find out.

I can't imagine this book being entertaining to anybody who has a good understanding of PC hardware technology, Blogging, or abnormal psychology. A lot of people know nothing in these areas, and they may find the book interesting, but will be misinformed in these areas by Deaver.

It seems to me that anybody with the lightest general interest in blogging could go out there and read the real thing instead of reading paragraph after paragraph of blog comments with no bearing whatsoever to the plot of the book.

Laptop PCs are not referred to, by anybody, as "flash memory". PATA/USB adapter/enclosures go by various names, but a subject matter expert professor would not call them "containers", since nobody else do and the word in no way distinguishes these items from the other 20 types of containers used in PC technology.

How dishonest and lazy of Deaver to portray a character as an intelligent, informed expert on a subject, have all other characters believe and respect his knowledge in that area, but where half of what he says is totally wrong or sophomoric misunderstandings. He gives an entirely wrong (and counter-intuitive) definition of "warblog", then says that there is a pervasive war on the Internet between technology bloggers vs. non-technology bloggers. Just search through blogs or ask anybody involved and you'll see that the great majority of both technology bloggers and non-technology bloggers don't give a damned about any such alleged controversy.

Psychology-wise, a simple grasp of mathematical proportion and deduction disproves the idiotic, fantastic assertion that if somebody spends "most of their time" in a virtual game world, that they lose the ability to distinguish between game-world and real-world. No character in the book, from the Internet-social expert, to the psychologically-insightful Dance, challenge this idiotic assumption. Based on the numbers of WOW players alone (as quoted in the book), it just isn't possible. The reader should be offended that Deaver thinks you are so stupid as to accept as realistic that Dance correctly identifies the motive for the murders based solely on the evidence that he is a dedicated online gamer.

Roadside crosses are appearing on California's highways.However, the accidents have yet to take place. CBI agent, and kinesics expert, Kathryn Dance, is sent to investigate what is going on.

I found this book a fairly enjoyable read, but I would not put it into the page turner category. I thought the character of Kathryn Dance, and the kinesics side of things was interesting. The plot itself was a bit slow moving, however, and the parts of the story dealing with Kathryn's mother, were less interesting, and a bit of an irritating diversion, from the main storyline.

I noticed there was less of the trademark Jeffery Deaver twists in this story, also. So, overall, not bad, but not fantastic either. I figure three stars is about right.

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 the danger, they find their efforts hindered by the blog owner and issues of free speech and anonymity. As if the case is not enough to deal with, Kathryn's boss, Charles Overby, is playing his usual undermining role, her friend and colleague, Michael O'Neil is acting strangely, a former murder case appears to be running into problems, Kathryn is threatened with a racial discrimination charge and her mother is arrested for euthenasing a policeman. Luckily, Kathryn is able to enlist the help of a UC Professor to unravel the world of computers and blogs and online gaming, and comes to realise that kinesics are not quite so useful in the cyber world, where the visual cues that usually accompany speech are lacking. Deaver uses this story to emphasise the plethora of lies, misinformation, rumour and gossip that is rife in blogs, as well as the lack of accountability for the information due to the anonymity of posters. Once again, plenty of twists in the tale, a few red herrings and some brand-name dropping. TJ's clever versions of Overby's name provide some laugh-out-loud moments. The author blurb at the back says he's working on a new Kathryn Dance for 2011: nothing so far, but I will be interested to read more of these.

A classic Deaver page-turner that keeps you hooked until the very end. Roadside Crosses explores the dark side of blogging and cyber-bullying, resulting in multiple deaths of readers of a popular online blog. As always, Deaver does his research into the subject, and puts it across in an entertaining way.

Kathryn Dance is a great new character, and this is the second book in her series. Deaver creates a great supporting cast, so you really become involved in her story, her family and her romantic life.

The only downside of Roadside Crosses is that Deaver takes his classic twist ending a bit too far, resulting in a messy and unsatisfying conclusion. Generally I enjoy his twisting conclusions and like being led down one path, only to end up on another; however it wasn't executed well in this story. A bit of a disappointment to end so weakly after being immersed in a great story.

As a suspense novel, "Roadside Crosses" works pretty well. But the quality of the research is subpar, and indeed causes me to question my enjoyment of the previous Deaver books I've read. In addition to several factual errors, there are a number of story details that just don't ring true at all, even if they are not technically errors. It's ironic that one of the book's themes is the misrepresentation or "translation failure" of facts on the internet, when the book itself is just as guilty. Here is a short list:

1. "DimensionQuest", the highly popular MMO played by two of the characters, is described as having "excessive blood". In a fight scene, a character "beheads" another. Yet the game is also described as T-rated (for teens). The ESRB does not permit games with graphic violence or beheadings the T-rating.
2. In the same game, a player is described as having "slaughtered an entire family". Not even M-rated (mature) games depict the killing of children. For this reason, children are simply absent from games that permit the player to kill indiscriminately.
3. Not an error, but one of those bad details: DQ is described as being very hardcore, with players suffering permanent consequences for their actions (such as loss of items, large amounts of experience, etc), and with real-life survival skills being necessary to survive in the game. No mainstream MMO would be designed that way. You cannot crack 10 million subscribers (as DQ has in the book) without catering to the casual audience, and that audience won't stand for such unforgiving gameplay.
4. The phrase "synth world" is used to refer to the online world, but virtually no one uses that phrase. The more accurate phrases would be "netspace" and "meatspace".
5. Deaver consistently confuses abbreviations used in texting with "leetspeak", and characters often use both. Yet in the real world, leetspeak is mostly used by gamers. People don't say "I owned that thread" in blog comments; "owned" is a gamer term. But Deaver's non-gamer characters regularly use leetspeak.
6. It's simply implausible that a blog focusing on local issues like the Chilton Report would attract a national audience, to say nothing of a global one.

This could have been a very good murder mystery. It has all the makings of it until the author just kills it with a great deal of Techie computer talk, blogging info, & endless repetitive dialogue.
Who cares about all the blogging info? I'm here to read what I thought was a mystery. Mr. Deaver seems to want to lengthen his book with endless dialogue which essentially says the same things.
Not one of his better books by any stretch of the imagination. I found myself scanning through the book & not caring what happened in the end.
A boring chore to get through. Just pass on this one. It doesn't come close to a Lincoln Rhyme novel in quality.

Kathryn Dance and her team of C.B.I. investigators begin searching for a killer who leaves crosses on the side of the road not as a memorials for a death but to signal a death to come. Is it the work of a confused mind, or a cold-blooded, calculating serial killer? As Kathryn and her team continue heir investigation, Kathryn's mother is arrested and charged with a mercy killing.

Conflicting priorities and a dearth of clues slow Kathryn down.

Although interesting, I felt the novel lacked a certain amount of "pop" necessary to capture the reader's attention and hold it until the mysteries are unravelled,

This could have been a very good murder mystery. It has all the makings of it until the author just kills it with a great deal of Techie computer talk, blogging info, & endless repetitive dialogue.
Who cares about all the blogging info? I'm here to read what I thought was a mystery. Mr. Deaver seems to want to lengthen his book with endless dialogue which essentially says the same things.
Not one of his better books by any stretch of the imagination. I found myself scanning through the book & not caring what happened in the end.
A boring chore to get through. Just pass on this one. It doesn't come close to a Lincoln Rhyme novel in quality.

Kathryn Dance and her team of C.B.I. investigators begin searching for a killer who leaves crosses on the side of the road not as a memorials for a death but to signal a death to come. Is it the work of a confused mind, or a cold-blooded, calculating serial killer? As Kathryn and her team continue heir investigation, Kathryn's mother is arrested and charged with a mercy killing.

Conflicting priorities and a dearth of clues slow Kathryn down.

Although interesting, I felt the novel lacked a certain amount of "pop" necessary to capture the reader's attention and hold it until the mysteries are unravelled,

This guy compares George Bush (and lets not forget Hillary Clinton and all of our allies) going into Iraq with Adolf Hitler killing millions of Jews! Ya they are about the same thing???? The only saving grace is that the liberal blogger doesn't fare so well! Why can't these authors leave their political bias out of their fictional novels. We read them for entertainment NOT to be preached to.

SETUP
A patrolman finds a homemade roadside cross along the coastal highway in the vicinity of Monterrey, dated for the following day, but assumes it to be an error. The next day a teenage girl is left in the trunk of a car on the beach, to be drowned when the tide comes in. She survives but Travis Brigham, an unpopular young man is blamed. After another girl claims that Travis attacked her, Travis disappears, and is relentlessly ridiculed on a local blog and otherwise online. Kinesics expert Katherine Dance of the California Bureau of Investigation is put in charge of the investigation.

In an secondary storyline, Dance's mother Eddie Dance (a nurse) is accused of a mercy killing. That's the setup

COMMENTS
Deaver presents a great deal of information about computer role-playing games, and the individuals who play them. Much information is also given about blogs, particularly how easy it is for malicious individuals to anonymously lie on them, and destroy innocent individuals lives. I found this material to be interesting, although not entirely new to me.

CAVEATS--which contain spoilers
The novel contains several dozen named characters, anyone of which could hypothetically be the "bad guy". It is very hard on readers to keep the characters straight--this is not a novel to read when you are distracted, or one chapter-a-day. So many unnecessary characters borders on "reader abuse".

As is typically the case when reading a Deaver novel, I was thinking 4 ½ stars up to the 3/4 point. Not quite 5 stars because of the clumsy lazy "rabbit pulled out of the hat" resolution to the main story. This "bad guy" appears for the first time late in the novel and attempts to kill the blogger. The "bay guy's" total presence in the novel is probably 2-3 pages (I'm guessing because I listened to the audioversion). This is lazy plotting. It robs the reader of the satisfaction of possibly solving the mystery him/herself. If Deaver had stopped here, "Roadside Crosses" would have been a solid 4 1/2 stars---but Deaver never knows when to stop.

Unfortunately, the story continues. The "bad guy" turns out to be a red herring, a "bad guy", but not "THE bad guy"---just an unbelievable coincidence. Suddenly, the ultimate "bad guy" is someone else with a different target and an implausible motive. No foundation whatsoever was lain in advance in the novel. The "victim" is essentially just a "name"---i.e., a "character" with zero development. It's just another "rabbit pulled out of the hat" device. Nor is it plausible that Dance figures the whole thing out (with no plausible evidence whatsoever), and miraculously has a swat team standing by to save the day at the last minute.

The secondary storyline (about Dance' mother) is also resolved by "pulling a rabbit pulled out of a hat" for the third time, with no foundation.

Deaver desperately scrambles to tidy-up at the end---sweeping numerous inconsistencies and loose threads "under the carpet", but the fabric is still badly stained by Deaver's hairballs.

CRITIQUE
Despite the caveats, this is one of the best Deaver novels, at least up to the 3/4 point. The characters are compelling, the pace fast, and the premise intriguing, the suspense is unrelenting. Thoroughly enjoyable, up to the 3/4 point. However, the last fourth is a great disappointment.

> Click on “Stoney” just below the product title to see my other reviews, or leave a comment to ask a question.

This quick-paced Kathryn Dance novel isn't as good as her superb debut, but is still a satisfying effort. In fact this feels a little low-key compared to most of the writer's work, although I wasn't prepared for one deftly delivered blindside. As in a couple of his other novels, Deaver unveils some social commentary that' somewhat non-partisan and vague but seems more and more to take on the religious right and self-righteous bloggers. (It's a little odd that the subject of assisted suicide is explored here with no allusions to Lincoln Rhyme, as that's where he came in.)

Deaver does an excellent job in this second in the Kathryn Dance series. Even though the book references the incidents of the previous novel, the reader can follow along quite well. Dance's character is further fleshed out, allowing us to see a bit more of what "makes her tick". The book is an interesting foray into the world of blogging and especially into the world of cyber bullying. It was frighteningly true to life to see how rumors, innuendo and outright lies can travel the globe in the speed of a mouse click and the terrible ramifications for those targeted.

Kathryn Dance is a kinesics expert, or trained to read body language. She is a hardy detective character for letting the reader follow both the brainy side of bureau crime prevention and active in outside the office duty. This adventure has a difference in that Deaver makes a foray into the computer world in the catching this serial killer. A large part of the detection revolves around role playing games on the internet. If you love this venue for catching criminals - and many TV and movie mysteries are employing it these days, this thriller's for you. I let it all blow by me simply because all I needed to be entertained was another dose of the fascinating art of reading the body and face. Catching a killer who leaves roadside crosses before committing grisly murders was a fun ride. Another good one from Jeffery Deaver.

I really liked this book. While I missed Lincoln Rhyme a little bit, the heroine of Roadside Crosses, Kathryn Dance, is a refreshing change of pace. A specialist in an art of reading people, she is up against a really tough challenge - a criminal who operates online and hides very effectively behind a virtual mob of angry anonymous posts.
While the pace of the narrative is a bit slow at times, the themes introduced in the novel keep the readers entertained. I myself had a bit of a laugh when listening to very official sounding descriptions of blogging and RSS feeds, which may be a bit removed from an everyday world of gaming and internet, but would be useful for those readers who are not as familiar with computers as the rest of us. I am left wondering if Mr. Deaver is a secret WOW addict. Somehow I don't think so, but it'd be really ironic of he was.
Another issue this novel addresses is cyber bullying, which can be as harmful and dangerous as regular bullying, and the evidence sticks around for much longer. This is a good book to read for anyone who has posted anything negative about others online.
Finally, as for the "keep you awake" status, this baby will do it. Unless you are completely unfamiliar with blogging and computers, in which case, it may be a bit boring.

Roadside crosses begin appearing, not as memorials for someone who has died, but rather as a sort of pre-memorial for someone who will die, and it is up to the detectives to discover who is responsible. The detectives must enter the world of the internet, blogs, and cyberbullying to find the answer, and the solution is not one you would expect.

I found this book especially interesting in light of the current cyberbullying trend. The story was interesting and had a surprising and satisfying ending.

This was a good, not great, book by Jeffery Deaver. I had never read one of his books with Kathryn Dance and I enjoyed it. The best thing to do with this novel is to enjoy the roller-coaster ride that it is and not let yourself over analyze it or let yourself get bogged down in the technical details. I recommend Roadside Crosses to anyone who enjoys a good mystery.

This was a predictable, uninspiring so-called thriller. From tne get go you know the "supposed suspect" couldn't be and you snore through the rest. Also putting the protaganists Mother as a suspected mercy killer was so lame and so uninteresting. Everything about this book was sad, Mr. Deaver should go to writing 101 and know to keep the reader interested you've got to make an effort in writing not sleepwalking through a contrived plot which makes no sense. Read "Lovely Bones" and see what a beautifully written story is about. The first and last book of Mr. Deaver's I'll be reading.

This is the second book in the Kathryn Dance series. I really like Dance's character -- her personality, her profession, and the other characters surrounding her.

In this book, there are so many twists and turns (some of them more obvious than others) that it keeps you guessing, even if you think you have an idea of where the plot is headed.

As another reviewer said, there is a lot of technical information in the book. However, that is not out of character for Jeffery Deaver. In the earlier Lincoln Rhyme books, Deaver teaches his readers about investigative procedure in great detail.

Overall, this was a very entertaining read. If I could have, I would have given it 4.5 stars, but since I couldn't I went ahead and gave it 5.

I've been an enthusiast reader of Jeffery Deaver's books since A Maiden's Grave, so I am doubly disappointed by Roadside Crosses. From the big picture point of view, the writing is often clumsy, the plotting is patently absurd, and the previous fine balance Deaver has shown between letting his readers in on new knowledge and keeping the story moving is nowhere in sight. For the Deaver fan, it's sad to see a favorite writer publish something that reads more like the last-but-one draft of what could have been a really entertaining piece of work. This Deaver novel won't find a home on my book shelf, but I'm still eager to see what he comes up with next.

Roadside Crosses by Jeffery Deaver opens up many cyber world vistas. The story is filled with suspense and misdirection and the more you read, the more suspects you uncover. The clues are there, but you miss them, just like Dance does, because there are just too many suspects and too many distractions. The intimate views of blogs and cyber game worlds is enlightening and entertaining and distracting. There were times in the story I wanted it to stay in the Synth world, simply because it was a place I'd never been and though some reviewers thought it too techy, it made the story for me.