If Lincoln Rhyme likes her, perhaps we will too. Was that Jeffery Deaver's thinking in introducing California investigator Kathryn Dance as a minor player in his most recent best-selling thriller featuring Rhyme, his quadriplegic forensic expert, then cutting the apron strings and giving her the lead?

Certainly Rhyme didn't take to Special Agent Dance's area of speciality at first - his love of science and hard evidence ensured that interpretation of body language, known as kinesics, was a little too airy-fairy for his liking. But The Cold Moon ended with Rhyme conceding the merit of Dance's techniques and her skill, setting the scene for a return with readers primed to accept her and her unusual talents.

So The Sleeping Doll, promoted as 'introducing Kathryn Dance', opens with a newspaper report of the conviction of Daniel Pell, a killer dubbed 'Son of Manson' for his role in the killing of a computer millionaire, his wife and two of his three children.

There was just one survivor: the youngest child, found by police in her bed, hidden by her toys, having apparently slept through the slaughter: the sleeping doll.

Eight years on, Dance is interviewing the creepy Pell at a prosecutor's request in the hope of a confession to another, unsolved crime to place before a grand jury. But it's a set-up and Pell, clever, mesmeric and with help from the outside, escapes in a violent confrontation that will leave

one of Dance's young colleagues critically injured.

It isn't her fault - but she's determined to use the insights gained in the interview, and whatever help she can get to catch him. So Dance, who's with the California Bureau of Investigation - 'like an FBI for the state' - enlists the help of three young women previously in his thrall as members of his cult-like family to try to prevent Pell killing those who had a role in sending him to jail.

So the scene is set for what is, in essence, a chase novel - and a long one at that - as Pell kills and maims his way out of the clutches of the law enforcers whenever they close in. There are the usual Deaver twists as Pell evades capture, and revelations about him, his crimes and those whose strings he pulled.

Deaver (below) also introduces a strong personal element, portraying Dance as clever and tough but still a loving and warm-hearted mother. Dance, a widow still pining for her FBI husband, finds herself growing fond of Winston Kellogg, the FBI man called in to help her. But her young son has thwarted previous attempts to form a new relationship.

Deaver is a polished storyteller. He has 22 novels in 25 languages and numerous awards to his credit, and readers have come to expect insights into the criminal mind along with complex plots and mounting tension from his psychological thrillers.

But Deaver has said that his best advice came from Mickey Spillane: 'People don't read books to get to the middle. They read to get to the end'. This time he could have done with paying less attention to that advice. The Sleeping Doll gets bogged down in the middle. Despite the mind games playing out between Pell and Dance, there are only so many times someone can be almost caught then get away before boredom sets in.

For those who last the distance there's a barrage of final plot twists that are hard to guess - but that's because they strain credibility to the breaking point.