I love the Kathryn Dance character. She's cool and bright, likes stylish footwear, and is an expert at kinesics—a form of reading body language and facial expressions—which comes in handy when interviewing criminals. This book follows several cases Agent Dance works on with her fellow CBI agents. At the forefront is a psycho working in the Monterey Bay area, orchestrating deadly stampedes in crowded venues, then selling pics and videos of the death and mayhem. Who knew that was a thing, but it is. I know stampedes at concerts have happened in real life, but the ones described in this book are exceptionally terrifying. The other cases involve a drug cartel working on the west coast of California and some local hate crimes. The action in the book's first half is slow, but the author throws a few surprising twists towards the end. Some plot lines involving her kids were implausible, but I immensely enjoyed this book. ( )

Thriller

Solitude Creek is the fourth in the Kathryn Dance series, following XO. In her latest thriller, Dance, an agent with the California Bureau of Investigation, finds herself suspended from duty when an interrogation goes bad in a horrific way. She’s busted down to the Civil Division of CBI and given the boring assignment of checking permits after a stampede in a local roadhouse results in several deaths and a number of injuries. Dance soon learns, however, that the panic was intentional—a classic case of someone yelling fire in a crowded venue—and unofficially begins to investigate.

Thus begins a deadly chess match between Dance, working with Michael O’Neil, and the eerie perpetrator, Antioch March, who is planning more such panics in the Central California area. He’s obsessed with the idea of people turning into pure animals to escape from threats he creates. No one attending a play, sitting in a movie theater, dining in a restaurant or stepping into an elevator is safe. . . . ( )

I can't believe I finished this book, but I guess I was hate-reading it toward the end. Too many convoluted plots, all resolved miraculously; too many loose ends tied in neat, unrealistic bows.

This is my last Jeffery Deaver book. I gave up on Lincoln Rhyme a couple of books ago. I wish I'd given up on Kathryn Dance before I wasted two evenings. ( )

Once again, if not for Booklikes-opoly I would have DNFed this thing. I wanted the page count though so I put up with it. FYI, this book is awful.

I gave this book half a star since it doesn't even deserve a full star. The entire book from start to finish was nonsensical and just insulting to anyone that has been reading this series. I honestly am baffled at how Deaver writes Kathryn Dance since he manages to write Amelia Sachs (The Lincoln Rhyme series) as a well developed character. Dance is written so terribly in this book, one wonders how the heck she even has a job. I also don't get why she has one man, let alone two wanting to be with her. You never get to see what is so great about her.

Dance is busted down in this one due to the fact that due to her reading a suspect wrong, he manages to get away. That segues over into Dance being asked to go over the insurance/documentation at at place called Solitude Creek. There was a recent incident at Solitude Creek that left several people injured and dead. That doesn't really matter though, the big issue is that Dance is not supposed to be investigating due to her new status, but does so anyway and you keep reading Dance having asides to herself about the fact she's not supposed to be investigating. When Dance's colleague Michael O'Neill is called in to help, she feels annoyed because she doesn't get why he's mad at her (probably because she's not supposed to be investigating a thing and is also not carrying a gun and that could lead to other people being hurt).

Between Dance trying to force herself back into the investigation that has a suspect on the run and trying to figure out what is going on at Solitude Creek the book already felt full. But nope, Deaver throws in some issues with Dance's two kids who still read like robots come to life. Then there's the question of Dance and her relationship with her boyfriend that she has been seeing for maybe a year book timeline wise.

The POVs were Dance, the bad guy in this one and then for some odd reason we go into a POV of a friend of Dance's as well as Dance's boyfriend. At that point I wanted to scream that just because the guy works with computers does not mean that he speaks to himself in freaking programming language.

And what's sad is that the most important part about Dance's character, ie her skills with kinesiology are not displayed at all. For some weird reason Deaver does some freaking cut aways and then you have other character remark at how awesome Dance was and how she was able to get information from a witness/suspect. Um are you serious? Why in the world wouldn't you show that?

The writing was really poor as was the flow. Deaver tries to throw some red herrings in here and there and I was actively rooting for her or her kids to end up dead in this one since that meant the series may be coming to a close. That's not a good thing to admit, but I was just sick of reading about Dance and her whole family by the time the final page was turned.

The ending was a joke and a half. We had someone propose to Dance (whatever man) and someone else saying goodbye to her romantically. ( )