This is the second of three books featuring Deaver’s new character, Colter Shaw. I wasn’t aware that it was a sequel until searching for other books with the same character, so it’s definitely readable out of order. Having said that, there were references to Shaw’s father and his untimely death – that seems to be part of the longer narrative that spans the series.
Colter Shaw is the thinking man’s bounty hunter – he doesn’t just round up (and sometimes kill) fugitives, he approaches the contracts with humanity. In fact, his business manager urges him to be more ruthless, while Shaw is seen to be more focussed on doing the right thing than chasing the money. In this outing, doing the right thing involves investigating the mysterious suicide by one of his bounty targets. The man jumps from a clifftop without fear and with no little serenity. Shaw believes there’s something odd going on within the organisation where the man has spent the preceding months, immersed in new-age rituals and beliefs. So he signs up for a season of self-improvement himself, hoping to uncover the truth.
Shaw is a capable operator, trained by his father in a host of rules by which to hunt and evade capture. He’s also a decent fighter – but it’s his mentality that intriguing. Who, other than Jack Reacher, would put himself into harm’s way just because something didn’t seem right?
Roadside Crosses is a thriller by Jeffery Deaver, featuring one of his regular characters, Kathryn Dance. However, her signature skill of kinesic analysis (the ability to read body language, making her an ace interrogator) isn’t really needed in this story – much of it is set in CyberSpace. The story includes Michael O’Neil, Kathryn’s colleague whom she has admired from afar for several books. It also introduces Jon Boling, an IT expert who is brought into the inner circle of Kathryn’s team to assist with the investigation.
Another in the Lincoln Rhyme/Amelia Sachs series from Jeffery Deaver – this one is pretty good and hints at the dangers for society with the growth of corporations that store massive amounts of data about private citizens.
Jeffery Deaver has introduced a new character. Special Agent Kathryn Dance is the star of this thriller and, for me, it’s every bit as good as one of his Lincoln Rhyme books. There are massive parallels – Rhyme is an expert criminologist who can track the movements of a suspect by the merest grain of sand that falls from his trousers; Dance is an expert interrogator who can pry into the innermost thoughts of a suspect by spotting the tiniest signals from their body language. I was impressed at the technical depth the author shows in his knowledge of the Kinesics (he even includes a list of books for further reading). And I loved the passage when Dance phoned up Rhyme for advice in the middle of the book and talks to his assistant Amelia Sachs, the other star of those books – priceless. 
musingstudio 