If Jeffery Deaver could eavesdrop on his readers, he'd listen for one thing: the rustle of pages turning. Rapidly.
"The literary philosopher I aspire someday to be is not John Milton or Shakespeare," Deaver says. "It's Mickey Spillane. People don't read books to get to the middle; they read the books to get to the end. That informs all of my writing. I want to get people to turn pages and miss subway stops, show up late for work, if at all possible."
"The Sleeping Doll" is Deaver's 25th novel and the first featuring Kathryn Dance as the protagonist. A secondary character in Deaver's novel "The Cold Moon," she is an expert in the science of kinesics -- the ability to read people's intentions from facial expressions and other nonverbal body movements. She gets drawn into a deadly game of hide-and-seek with Daniel Pell, a charismatic figure who has escaped from prison after being interrogated by Dance. Pell is intent on establishing a family that eerily evokes comparisons to Charles Manson's cult.
Thus, the most unnerving scene in "The Sleeping Doll" involves not one drop of blood, not a single weapon fired or carnage of any kind. Set in a Northern California restaurant, it depicts Pell silently sizing up recruits for his schemes.
"I consider it one of the scariest scenes I've ever written," Deaver says. "And, yet, nothing happens. He doesn't act on it. We know ... he's going to be a Pied Piper. He's going to lure away these people."
Dance emerged as a lead character for a few reasons. She has the necessary skill set, and also is different enough from Deaver's go-to character, Lincoln Rhyme, a quadriplegic criminologist, to stand out. But there also is another issue involved that has nothing to do with the craft of writing.
"Whenever I hear a writer say 'I write for myself,' my initial response is 'No you don't,' " Deaver says. "You write for an audience. It may be a very small audience, but nonetheless, you need to know what your market is and wants. I've been aware over the last few years that although my fans absolutely love Lincoln Rhyme, and the books sell millions of copies around the world, they're very procedural books. They're very forensic, "C.S.I."-oriented books, and there's not a lot of time for human development. My fans have commented on that."
There are certain elements that Deaver cannot forgo, notably the plot twists and red herrings that, in retrospect, have been carefully seeded before they are sprung on the reader. For approximately eight months, working eight hours per day, Deaver does nothing but research and outline a novel, using the precision of an architect to construct his plot.
This might sound a bit antiseptic, but there's plenty of room for improvisation and inspiration during this somewhat tedious process.
"I've boxed myself into a terrible corner and thought, 'What on Earth am I going to do?' " Deaver says. "Things that never occurred to me when I conceived the book, all of a sudden jump out quite unexpectedly. It's primarily perspiration, but there's definitely inspiration involved."
And much of that invention comes by way of Dance, a character who gives "The Sleeping Doll" a different texture from Deaver's other books. A widowed mother of two children, she is able to divine nuances of behavior from body language. Lying to Dance is out of the question, which sets up a series of quandaries in her personal life. If she's out on a date, she has to consciously turn off her powers of perception. And she can readily read her children's behavior, which causes equal amounts of concern and heartache.
Given the amount of research on kinesics Deaver did for "The Sleeping Doll," has he become more aware of the behavior of others?
"It's not really a one-shot deal," he says. "You need to, through the course of several conversations, establish various baselines of behavior. A true interrogation would require days, if not weeks, of conversation, getting to know something about them. Only then can one draw truly significant conclusions. But there's a lot of shorthand I have been quite astonished to find, and I'll tell you, it's a little nerve-wracking if you're out on a date checking out the girl."
Additional Information:
'The Sleeping Doll'
Author: Jeffery DeaverPublisher: Simon & Schuster, $26.95, 428 pages
Capsule review
Jeffery Deaver's new novel, 'The Sleeping Doll' could have been subtitled 'Family Life: Both Sides Now.' Kathyrn Dance, a single mother of two and a kinesics expert with the California Bureau of Investigation, is trying to hold her family together as she pursues an escaped killer. Daniel Pell, the object of her pursuit, is trying to establish a Manson-like cult of followers to salve his need for familial affection. Both are brilliant in their own way: Pell as a manipulator of human weakness, and Dance as a skilled investigator who can intuit her prey's moves. The chess game that plays out between the pair elevates the book above most standard crime novels.
