Daniel Pell, sentenced to life for brutal murder, makes a daring escape from his cell. The search for the criminal is carried out by Katherine Dance, an experienced police psychologist and a specialist in kinesics - body language. She has interrogated Pell, and she knows that she is dealing with an extremely dangerous maniac. Pell, a former cult leader, is confident in his superpowers; he himself is an excellent psychologist and a ruthless manipulator. And he likes to kill. It’s as if he’s taking revenge for the years he spent in prison, and thanks to his intelligence and resourcefulness, he’s always half a step ahead of his police pursuers. The confrontation between Dance and Pell resembles a chess game between opponents of equal strength. But, unlike chess, the outcome will be unexpected for the winner and fatal for the loser...

Special Agent Kathryn Dance – introduced in The Cold Moon – stars in the latest thriller from New York Times bestselling author Jeffery Deaver. When Special Agent Kathryn Dance is sent to interrogate the disappointing killer Daniel "Son of Manson" Pell as a suspect in a newly unearthed crime, she feels both trepidation and electrifying intrigue. Pell is serving a life sentence for brutal murders years earlier that mirrored those perpetrated by Charles Manson in the 1960s. But Pell and his cult members left behind a survivor who – because she was in bed hidden by her toys – was dubbed the Sleeping Doll. Pell has long been both reticent and unrepentant about the crime. But Dance sees an opportunity to pry a confession from him for the recent murder – and to learn more about the depraved mind of this career criminal. But when Dance's plan goes terribly wrong and Pell escapes, leaving behind a trail of dead and injured, she finds herself in charge of her first manhunt. As the idyllic Monterey Peninsula is paralyzed by the elusive killer, Dance turns to the past to find the truth about what Daniel Pell is really up to. She tracks down the now-teenage Sleeping Doll to learn what really happened that night, and arranges a reunion of three women who were in his cult at the time of the killings. The lies of the past and the evasions of the present boil up under the relentless probing of Kathryn Dance, but will the truth about Daniel Pell emerge in time to stop him from killing again?