A killer is loose on the Monterey Peninsula in Jeffrey Deaver’s latest thriller, “Roadside Crosses.”

It’s a book as current as the Internet and the cyberspace, we love and hate. A book immersed in the alternate universe that so many fans disappear into. Around the world millions of players of these violent games can’t always tell the real world from the game world, where they spend so many hours.

Deaver’s main character is Kathryn Dance, the investigator specializing in “kinesics,” the ability to read body language. We first met Kathryn in Deaver’s books starring Lincoln Rhyme, the crippled New York City forensic investigator.

She is on the hunt for Travis Brigham, a young man determined to kill all the people who bullied him on the Internet blog called “The Chilton Report.” Kathryn’s plate is overflowing, as a case she was working on in Southern California is being stalled in the courts.

And to add to her troubles, her mother — a head nurse — has been arrested, accused of the “mercy killing” of a young police officer critically injured in a case that Kathyrn was also working on. Since there is nothing she can do about the case hung up in the courts or her mother’s arrest(she did retain a top attorney to help her mother), she must put all her energy in capturing Brigham.

The first two attempts to kill two of the bullies just missed, the potential victims have survived, but now a third person just tangently aligned with the case has been murdered. Kathyrn is racing the clock to catch the killer before there are more victims.

With the assistance of her partner, Michael O’Neill, and the computer expert Jon Boling, Kathyrn must follow the clues to catch a killer. Deaver actually uses real Web sites to entice his readers into helping solve the crime.

Few writers of thrillers have the expertise to draw their readers into the narrative as well as Jeffrey Deaver. “Roadside Crosses” is available at local book stores and the Wake County Libraries.