Between ‘online’ and the real-line
Vaishnavi Jayakumar
First Published : 25 Oct 2009 10:22:00 AM IST
Last Updated : 25 Oct 2009 12:06:09 AM IST
It’s only when you turn page 397 and stare at a list of acknowledgements that you can allow yourself to relax, knowing you’ve truly reached the end of a Jeffery Deaver book. His trademark roller-coaster ride plot, with converging parallels and heart-thudding twists, keeps the reader in a constantly humming state of suspense.
Maybe that’s why (with the exception of The Bone Collector) his books, though eminently suitable for film adaptation, are yet to make the transition to Hollywood blockbusters — there are only that many vivid, heart-thudding triple whammies one can take! Things are never what they seem with Deaver’s 5 Ds of deviation, distraction, diversion, disturbance and disinformation.
As Deaver himself seems to be journalist, folk-musician, author and lawyer — all rolled in one, it’s no wonder his books span a range of exotic subjects (be it magic, civil history or clocks!). While earlier The Blue Nowhere delved into the cult-like world of hacking and social engineering, The Broken Window obliquely touched on the world’s currently hot doomsday (OMG!- Google’s taking over the world!) scenario — data mining. Having once tasted cyber-thriller themed crime a la Deaver, the urban tribe clamouring for another tantalising “fix” of crime with a liberal dose of cyber-tech has finally been placated with Deaver’s latest book, Roadside Crosses.
With Deaver probably struggling to find the right kind of knot for the charismatic crime-fighting duo Rhyme-Sachs’ perpetually problematic private life Roadside Crosses sees the return of Kinesics (body language in plain English) expert — Kathryn (yawn) Dance. A human lie-detector armed with nothing more than “predator specs” and the Myers Brigg personality type indicator to identify High Machiavellians and Manipulators, Dance is an unfortunately anaemic substitute for the gifted, paraplegic forensic expert Lincoln Rhyme and model-turned cop protege Amelia Sachs.
To compensate for the lack of Rhyme’s mass spectrometer, high-tech gizmos and overall charisma, Deaver sinks his teeth satisfyingly into the synthetic world of gaming, social networking and blogs. The words of New York Times’ Richard Bernstein at the start of the book, set the tone for what is to follow... “What the Internet and its cult of anonymity do is to provide a blanket sort of immunity for anybody who wants to say anything about anybody else, and it would be difficult in this sense to think of a more morally deformed exploitation of the concept of free speech.”
The post-Matrix, post-Columbine years have opened up multiple worlds and realities... quantum, alternate, parallel, virtual, and “real”. In Roadside Crosses, Deaver examines “the blurring of the line between the synthetic world — the online life — and the real world”. A self-important member of the Monteroy community sees a roadside memorial to two young women who never made it home from their graduation party and muses aloud on highway safety and maintenance on his blog The Chilton Report.”
This simple observation about a fatal accident in which all he does is question whether the road was safely maintained, jumps from highway safety — then moves on to government finances and then to the kid who was driving, even though he apparently didn’t do anything wrong. The posters get more and more agitated as they attack him and finally the blog turns into a barroom brawl among the posters themselves.”
Thus explaineth tech guru-cum-potential romantic interest Boling to Dance, when he is drawn into the attempted murder inquiry of a giddy young girl who has a miraculous reprieve from death — by her worst possible nightmare. On discovering that victims are being tracked online and their deaths planned according to their phobias — (conveniently provided information for the n00b serial killer in Facebook-style discussions!) Boling disgustedly bursts out, “We give away too much information about ourselves online — way too much.”
And so, a citizen crusader’s blog post on an accidental driving death explodes tangentially into a frenzied witch-hunt of comments, IMs, gossip, innuendo and allegations. And when outspoken young girls start disappearing it doesn’t take the trigger-happy grapevine long to speculate and zero in on the suspect.
A teenager, happiest in his gaming world, is “different” in the real world, and is dubbed “weird” in the online world — the obvious candidate to be tarred and feathered. As mob outrage grows in the gossamer spiders web-disguised-as-candy-floss world of social networking, cyber-vigilantism leaches into cyber-bullying; and flame-war fuelled hormones seep and spill over into the Real World with devastating consequences.
Boling’s “MMORPG, Leetspeak and Web 2.0 Blargon for Dummies” tutorial for Kathryn Dance makes a delightful aside to the main storyline as does the only multidimensional part of Dance’s world — her uneasy relationship with her mother. The Master of the Twist in the Tail hasn’t lost his touch... Roadside Crosses is a ripping good read to keep you sated — till the next Lincoln Rhyme!
— Vaishnavi is a disability rights activist based in Chennai. jayakumar.vaishnavi@gmail.com
