It is rare, I think, that one writes a book review before one has hit the halfway mark of the book. But some books require an immediate reaction. Jeffrey Deaver’s The Sleeping Doll is just such a book. So I wrote half of this review before I finished reading. The second half of the book, however, did nothing but confirm my impressions of the first half.

First, some background. I picked up this book on the recommendation of The Economist, which in a 26 June article called Deaver “a masterful plotter” and put The Sleeping Doll in “A Better Class of Whodunnits.” This is the third or fourth crime novel I have read in a row, and perhaps I have just grown weary of the genre’s conventions, but The Sleeping Doll is just awful. Nothing about the book: prose, characters, or events, sets it apart in any positive way from any run-of-the-mill crime novel. Many of the problems with the book are glaring, and I have highlighted a few of them below.

Deaver seems intent in showing off his research and knowledge. At the start of chapter thirty (page 216), we get 2 paragraphs about the attractions of Vallejo Springs, in Napa, in addition to a shot at the movie Sideways. These little asides litter the book like flotsam, not advancing the story or revealing characters. They just take up space. Moreover, numerous times in the story, Deaver takes pains to show us how the science of kinesics (study of body-language) is used in interrogation. It’s not bad information, and some authors can work it into a story seamlessly, but Deaver doesn’t. Information about kinesics is used to justify what appears to the reader as nothing more than the main character’s intuition. This is less CSI than it is Psychic Hotline.

Unfortunately, Deaver’s research didn’t seem to extend to police procedure, where the holes are obvious enough for even me to spot. There is a scene early in the book where Dance and her team interrogate a witness/suspect. When he provides evidence of his innocence, they just permit him to remain in the office while they discuss the status of their investigation. Now I am no policeman, but I don’t think it is standard procedure to allow random people the opportunity to just sit and listen to the police discuss the status of a high-priority and sensitive investigation, especially if that person is a writer/journalist.

Deaver too often falls prey to the trap of telling the reader about the characters rather than letting the characters show themselves. A typical example occurs on page 223, which reads “She gave him the news about [name redacted] too, and the young agent responded with utter silence, a sign that he was truly shaken.” (emphasis mine) A decent writer (or editor!) would have simply removed the highlighted portion, and let the character’s lack of response speak for itself.

These issues are not helped by the prose, which is at times clunky, like this 5-sentence gem:

“Dance’s administrative assistant, short, no-nonsense Maryellen Kresbach, walked into the room with coffee for all (Dance never asked; Maryellen always brought). The mother of three wore clattery high heels and favored complicated coiffed hair and impressive fingernails.

The crew in the conference room thanked. Dance sipped the excellent coffee. Wished Maryellen had brought some of the cookies sitting on her desk.”

If Deaver wanted to adopt that sort of elision as a prose style, it might have been good to do it consistently, but this is the only place it occurs. Stands out like a flashing light. Groaned out loud when I read it.

Then there is this cliff-hanger to end chapter sixteen: “It was just then that she got a call from someone who, she realized, might have some thoughts about what the killer might have in mind.” Anyone who has ever done any writing at all knows that two ‘mights’ do not make right, and in fact make it horribly horribly wrong.

Poor editing compounds the awkward prose. We read on page 45: “Dance introduced them and instantly the writer disappeared from the agent-in-charge’s radar screen instantly.” This is simply the biggest howler in a list – just a few pages later, on 74, there is an open parenthesis with no corresponding close parenthesis.

Deaver is clearly experienced, and he does engineer a couple of mildly exciting scenes, but the twists at the end are unsurprising and not compelling. And the few good scenes that occur are too few and far between to offset the bad parts. Further, I knew certain characters couldn’t last beyond the end of the novel (since the front jacket says “Introducing Kathryn Dance” one knows that this is going to be series of novels) and their demise was anticlimactic.

It should be clear from this review that I do not recommend The Sleeping Doll. In fact, it was extremely disappointing – I expected more out of Deaver, as the jacket does proclaim him as “The Number One Bestselling Author” after all. Suffice it to say that it will take something pretty radical for me to pick up another Deaver novel.