The Monterey Peninsula is rocked when a killer begins to leave roadside crosses beside local highways — not in memoriam, but as announcements of his intention to kill. And to kill in particularly horrific and efficient ways: using the personal details about the victims that they've carelessly posted in blogs and on social networking websites.

The case lands on the desk of Kathryn Dance, the California Bureau of Investigation's foremost kinesics — body language — expert. She and Deputy Michael O'Neil follow the leads to Travis Brigham, a troubled teenager whose role in a fatal car accident has inspired vicious attacks against him on a popular blog, The Chilton Report.

As the investigation progresses, Travis vanishes. Using techniques he learned as a brilliant participant in MMORPGs, Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games, he easily eludes his pursuers and continues to track his victims, some of whom Kathryn is able to save, some not. Among the obstacles Kathryn must hurdle are politicians from Sacramento, paranoid parents and the blogger himself, James Chilton, whose belief in the importance of blogging and the new media threatens to derail the case and potentially Dance's career. It is this threat that causes Dance to take desperate and risky measures...

In signature Jeffery Deaver style, Roadside Crosses is filled with dozens of plot twists, cliff-hangers and heartrending personal subplots. It is also a searing look at the accountability of blogging and life in the online world. Roadside Crosses is the third in Deaver's bestselling High-Tech Thriller Trilogy, along with The Blue Nowhere and The Broken Window.

"In bestseller Deaver's surprise-filled third Kathryn Dance novel (after The Sleeping Doll), Dance, an agent with the California Bureau of Investigation, gets an eye-opening education in some of the hottest areas of the cyberworld. After an auto accident kills two teens, vicious smears of Travis Brigham, the teen driver deemed responsible but not charged in the accident, appear on the Chilton Report, a popular blog. After one of the accusing bloggers barely survives an assault, Brigham becomes a 'person of interest.' Brigham disappears, and attacks, each preceded by a crude roadside cross, spread to other Chilton bloggers. Meanwhile, Dance also looks into a mercy killing at Monterey Bay Hospital that takes an unexpected turn, and Robert Harper, a special prosecutor from the attorney general's office in Sacramento, begins an investigation that will affect her. Deaver's expert and devious plotting makes it a challenge to stay only a couple of steps behind him." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

In the latest addition to the Kathryn Dance series, Deaver tells the chilling tale of a vigilante seeking revenge — in both the cyber world and the real one.

Jeffery Deaver is the bestselling author of The Sleeping Doll, The Cold Moon, The Blue Nowhere, The Bone Collector, The Empty Chair, The Devil's Teardrop, and fifteen other suspense novels. His book A Maiden's Grave was made into an HBO movie starring James Garner and Marlee Matlin, and his novel The Bone Collector was made into a feature release from Universal Pictures, starring Denzel Washington. He lives in North Carolina.