Serial Murder Books

For me, Peter Straub's most interesting phase was the Blue Rose short stories and novels (including "The Buffalo Hunter") which culminated in The Hellfire Club. Don't get me wrong, The Hellfire Club doesn't belong to the Blue Rose series, but coming after it, is able to utilise its dense and imagistic style. The Hellfire Club is the best type of experimentation - it's a great story which also creates a series of stories-within-stories in an absolutely authentic way. So Straub is able to ventriloqise a Djuna Barnes-style poetry in "Unwritten Words", mimics a frustrated housewife's gargantuan roman a clef written partly on hotel stationary and bar coasters from around the world, and most pivotally creates a pastiche of Lord of the Rings in a "talking trees" fantasy trilogy which inspires insane cult devotion and a whirlpool of litigation and pre-Internet Internet-style exegesis. It's also the best serial killer novel that doesn't feature Hannibal Lecter. The more I try to explain this book, the more convoluted I seem to make it. But it's hilariously funny, deadly serious, deeply emotional, scathingly satirical, is a fantastic mystery with an endangered and endearing female amateur sleuth (think Rosemary's Baby - piecing together a tapestry of clues while in extreme danger), and has some beautiful and lyrical descriptive writing that makes scenes spring to life. While Hellfire Club sets up its main characters in the first hundred pages, and we grow to know and like Nora Chancel, the book goes completely ballistic when Nora is kidnapped by Dick Dart, a DIY surgeon (he's not a serial killer - that's libellous talk!) with some refreshing and not altogether wholesome social philosophies. When Dart first explodes on the scene, there is a long section of the novel which I think is one of Mr Straub's most incredible achievements.

Straub has written some fine, atmospheric thrillers. This one was tough to like. The villain is over-the-top evil. The heroine maddeningly endures the indignities of her nasty in-laws and her spineless husband. It was a relief for her to be kidnapped. And the Hellfire Club? Didn't seem to have much to do with anything.

Every fine writer is entitled to lay an egg now and then. I hope this one never hatches and reproduces.

Well, I was convinced by Stephen King's endorsment on the back cover, where he says, 'Dick Dart alone is worth the price of admission'. I'll take King's reccomendations with a grain of salt from here on. Dart was certainly the highlight, and I was looking at my watch waiting for him to appear, because the rest of the book didn't have all that much 'zap' to it. It's a novel that does all the little things right: plot fits together, characterization is competent, prose is okay, though nothing special. It does these technical things well, all the 'platform' things, but never really delivers much payoff. I was waiting for this secret hellfire club to become relevant - maybe Davey's in secret league with Dick Dart and so on - but it's just a chunk of backstory that never really comes into play. Oh well, I only paid $2 in a second hand book store, no great loss.

This was decent, i guess. Haven't read a lot of Peter Straub - only Koko (which I thought was marginally better than this), and his collaborations with the great Steven King (The Talisman, Black House). I enjoyed The Hellfire Club overall, but Straub's dialogue (in this and Koko as well) just isn't completely believable for some reason. And I had a hard time really accepting Davey and Nora Chancel (and Dick Dart, for that matter) as real, fleshed-out characters. Again, I enjoyed the book overall, and if a friend asked me about it, I would recommend it, but I don't think I'll ever regard Mr. Straub as one of my favorite authors. Good story-teller, though; if I was huddled around a campfire listening to him spin some spooky ghost-story, I would most likely be delighted. I'll definitely read more Straub in the future (hopefully more creations with Steven King, who I suspect must handle all the technical guts of their joint efforts: dialogue, character development, etc.). One last thing, not a big deal: how many times in one book do I have to read "..she padded into the kitchen," or "she padded into the living room," or "she padded back into the kitchen," or "she padded upstairs." ugh...quit "padding" around and just walk once in a while. Anyway, if you're thinking of buying and reading the book, I say go for it. i don't think you'll be dissapointed, but I don't think it will change anybody's life, either.

I was hoping Straub would treat us by tossing in a few mentions to Floating Dragon, since the setting in this book, wealthy Connecticut suburbs of New York City, was about the same, but nope, no such luck.

The title of this novel comes from Straub's version of a certain infamous Yale fraternity, only in this case he dubs it the Hellfire Club. The main character here is Nora, a Vietnam veteran and a woman suffering through menopause (no joke). Nora has, at the novel's start, been falsely accused of kidnapping a frumpy loser of a neighbor lady of hers who basically makes the claim up to add excitement to her life. While at the police station sorting through the charge, Nora, is herself abducted by a wisecracking millionaire serial killer called Dick Dart. Dick (it comes clear later that the nickname is not without reason) takes Nora with him on his flight from justice. He brags to her about his life, deeds, how he never makes love to a woman under sixty, even his secret motive for killing a number of rich local women (they were all connected to his father's law firm as clients, and the negative publicity and client-flight should ruin the old man, whom Dick Dart hates). Nora is a shrewd woman who holds her own against the arrogant, oddball Dick Dart, son of one of the wealthiest lawyers in town. She presents herself as one criminal relating to another, and Dart buys her act and is amused by her show of toughness. They drive through New England, steal cars and lay low, have discussions about a Lord of the Rings-like novel they both love, and Nora manages at one point to escape, but since she's a suspect in a kidnapping back in Connecticut, she cannot go to the police.

Dick Dart eventually catches up with Nora again, but she trades some information she's obtained about the secret meaning within the Lord of the Rings-ish book in exchange for Dart sparing her life for the moment. The pair make their way to a famous writer's resort called Shorelands, where Dart enters a comical meltdown stage, takes hostages (a group of women, whom he makes strip naked...a bit lurid Mr. Straub) and.....well...the rather flat novel does finally reach its conclusion with order being restored and everyone getting about what they deserve.

This book would probably never have gotten published by a first-time writer and were it not for the lingering fame of Straub as writer of some fine horror novels back in the day, this wouldn't be on bookshelves now. I know that's a stinging comment but it's true and I'm out of patience with Peter Straub for a few too many lackluster books like this. I mildly regret the time I put into The Hellfire Club (by no means a short novel) and wouldn't recommend it to anyone except die-hard Straub fans or those with major amounts of time on their hands. I know that's a little mean but I think Straub could do better than he has with his books since Koko.

I read this book several years ago and still think about its eery chacaters and storyline. It's essentially a mystery-thriller, but the themes underlying the story are haunting, having to do with identity, love, and obsession. I couldn't put it down. And it's so well-written. One of my top five novels of the last five years (and I read a lot).

This is one of the most annoying and disappointing novels I've ever read. At first, I found it mildly intriguing. Then as I read on, the main character became more disconnected from people and more disgusting. At one point, later on, he loves his wife's fear of flying, apparently because it makes her dependent on him. Yuck. In the middle, I was convinced that the author didn't know how to write a novel. The story lacks all the things I usually want from a novel: an interesting through-line and an intriguing premise, a compelling main character and a mesmerizing central conflict, some depth of theme and revelation of human nature, a structure that moves forward. Most of the time, I hated it, yet I did like a brief back-story sequence in the middle. Then, as I approached the end, the narrative became more and more absurd. Now, after I've finished it, I understand what the writer was trying to do. I guess he succeeded, but it didn't work for me, although it apparently worked for a lot of professional reviewers. I wouldn't recommend it, but I'm more critical than most readers.

First I must say that I was concerned for seeing the low rating of this book on Amazon but when i finished the book I am glad to read a different one...For the readers who will wonder about this book's genre I can give a clue Lasdun writes like Murakami and Auster but of course he has his own talents..After reading this book,my first thing to do tomorrow is to buy SEVEN LIES...Don't think about the rating,this book is a must read..

Lawrence Miller is an uptight British gender studies professor at an American university. Strange things start happening to him: a bookmark isn't exactly where he thought it was. A coin in his office seems to have been moved. Then much stranger things start happening.

The vision is murky throughout this slim, grabbing tome. In many thrillers, you don't know exactly who is responsible. In this one, you don't even really understand what's happening (at least a chunk of the time). Even at the end, Lasdun refuses to make the resolution completely clear (and even dips into the surreal): After finishing the book, I could see the general resolution but lay awake, tying up loose ends in my mind. [One of the quotes on the back of the book gave me an inkling as to how the book might end; I enjoyed the book a great deal, but I'd have enjoyed the book even more if I hadn't read that.]

The Financial Times called this a "terse and beautifully controlled Gothic thriller" [1]. Well put. It was also a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and an Economist Best Book of the Year for 2002.

[1] Jonathan Derbyshire, "Covert Action," Financial Times, 3 February 2006 [available free on-line as of 29 August 2007].

Poor plot if there is any real effort in it,poor content, nothing new!

Nice twist to the serial killer style novel. Lots of interseting North Carolina references (which I liked). The police procedure
in this novel rivals the 87th Precinct novels of Ed McBain.

Jeff Pate's "Winner Take All" was a great book, especially being a first novel. I liked it a lot. I would definitely classify "Winner Take All" as one of the best books I've read in the past 12 months. The cover was great, the dust jacket information was insightful, giving an idea of what the story was about without giving away the entire story.

This was just a great book, writing wise. The plot lines tied together early, so you could see where some of the sub-plots were going to mesh with each other. Hager's family involvement, while it starts slow, is something that becomes more intricate as the novel progresses. This type of foreshadowing makes it believable when the time comes for his daughter to get involved. The plot was well-done. All the elements for a serial killer book were present. The unknown killer who gets to be a viewpoint character briefly, the dedicated SBI people, the local police. The details about serial killers and criminal investigation are there, which tells me that the author knows the subject, and has done the research to make the book believable.

Virtually unknown outside of North and South Carolina, Jeff Pate is an author with the potential to make it very big. "Winner Take All" would make a great movie. I just picked up his second "Eye of the Beholder" and I'm anxious to get started.

I discovered author and former police detective Jeff Pate in April at a book event in Myrtle Beach, SC where he was promoting his new novel "Eye of the Beholder." Not only is he more handsome in person, but he's very personable and chatted with everyone who came by his table that evening (For you ladies, I learned he was very single!)

I bought "Eye of the Beholder" then, read it and just had to rush back to the store to get "Winner Take All." Being the first in his series featuring Clark Hager, I wanted to start from the beginning (although I cheated and read "Eye of the Beholder" first) so I can keep up with his great cast of characters. "Winner Take All" was great. Jeff Pate develops his plot and ties the sub-plots together in a neat package--all making for an exciting read. What stands out in my mind as Pate's greatest quality is that his characters seem life-like and the book reads as if it really happened. I've finally found another author whom I can trust to keep me interested in his series. Read all books by Jeff Pate--you'll become a fan, too.

Even allowing for the fact that this is the author's first book, it is so bad, it's painful to read. I had to force myself to finish this book. The story is rambling and weak, the writing poor, the characters are cartoons, the grammatical and spelling errors insulting. Perhaps a competent editor would be of value to this author in future endeavors, although I have my doubts.

This book is absolutely, without a doubt the biggest grammatical error of all time. I'm astonished to read that he gave an editor credit for making it better. The sentence structure of this book reads as if it was written by a 10 year old. Spelling errors abound including: "During her childhood he was "puddy" in her hands, but she was the clay a sculptor molds into a Venus de Milo." pg 115. I live in VA and I'm pretty sure that putty is spelled with "t's" in the south as well as the rest of the US.

I read over five books a week and this is the first book that was so poor that I wanted my money back. I kept reading it thinking it surely had to get better. Trust me, it's a disaster from page one to the end. I wish the publisher would quit cutting down trees to publish books by this author. Jeff Pate would do us all a huge favor by signing up for some English classes. The storyline is weak and disappointing. If Clark Hager were a "real" detective, I hope they would fire him for all of his errors. I'm planning on mailing my copy to the publisher with notations indicating the numerous (100's) of grammatical and spelling errors.

I had read a recommendation on this about it being a great read but I was quite disappointed in it. Almost like a variation on Hitchcock's "Frenzy" with the actual crime not to mention some stalker movies/books I've read. Not a bad read, just disappointed (I guess you could call this a so-so review due to a backlash from having read such a glowing recommendation).
I like Martha Grimes, Michael Connelly, T.Jefferson Parker & Robert Crais. I also have read all of Dame Agatha and Marsh.

One cannot always explain why things are. Why do I not like vanila ice cream while someone else loves it? This book just wasn't that enjoyable.

It's a hard feat to switch point of views as often as the writer did in this book, and failed to suceed. By always jumping into another character's pov, the reader always knows what's going on, which losing the mystery of the mystery.

The main charcter was dislikable, to say the least. He was arrogant, pushy, and rude. And I normally love villains. His IQ wasn't even that high, as some suggest. He was stupid where as the writer tried to make him sound smart. I love smart serial killers, who have a method to their madness. Mix lacked this entirely. He killed out of passion, and fumbled around being obvious to try and cover it up. I would have been much more interested in reading a book about his role model, Christie, and his murders.

The characters themselves though were pretty in depth, I have to say, which is why I gave this 2 stars as opposed to 1. She really gave you a lot of background information and let you get to know the main characters, which I love in a book. I just was very disappointed that none of them got their happy ending. And I am not even into happy endings. The endings, for everyone, just felt rushed.

All the longing for the boy next door, to finally get him and reject him? Bleh.

All the longing for the supermodel to finally get in and walk away? Bleh.

All the longing for the good Doctor and then she up's and dies before there's any resolution? Bleh.

I wouldn't recommend this book. To anyone. In fact, I'm throwing my copy away after that dull read.

If you're expecting a comfortable, Wexford-like read, this isn't it! I'm a huge fan of Rendell's Inspector Wexford series. This book, not so much. I have enjoyed a few of her other forays into Wexford-free mystery, but this one left me pretty cold. Maybe it's because so little of Wexford's character is revealed in each novel, so that each revelation feels like a major concession and you really become sympathetic with the character, but Mix and the other characters in this book seem peculiarly wooden and contrived.

As far as I know, it's the only book in which Rendell writes from the point of view of the murderer, so maybe that's the problem, but I actually found it quite disturbing. I had to put the book down a number of times to get my thinking straight again. Mix really doesn't have any redeeming qualities at all, classic socio/psychopath, but dammit, I was just SCREAMING for him to get caught before he'd even committed his first murder. I couldn't stand him. Maybe that was the point.

The old lady was pretty reprehensible too. She wasn't likable at all, and the other characters were all of the slappable variety as well. I didn't like a single one of them, and so had a hard time feeling any sympathy/empathy for any of them. I did kind of cheer for the model a little bit at the end, but even so, she was a vapid twit. and vastly annoying.

I was very disappointed in this book, especially considering how excellent Rendell's writing usually is.

In a nutshell...a very readable story with lots of "Oh they're bound to catch him now" moments; so good as far as suspense goes but a let down at the end in that it just well, ended...nothing remarkable at all.

I felt the book was too padded out with stuff that was really irrelevant, like the doctor that Gwen writes to (after reading his wife's obituary) in the hope of resuming their romance from half a century ago. Or the clairvoyant that everyone seems to visit and whilst she does tend to `see things' relevant to the characters...it's still really unimportant. The fixation with Narissa doesn't really need to be there either or her fixation with some other guy whom she realises isn't for her anyway.

I'm glad I read it, it wasn't a bad read...I like suspense but not the best.

i thought it started out very slow. Then it got really good, then the end..it just seemed rushed. The ending to me, didn't really have anything to do with the story. As one person wrote, you don't know how Eve's and Cole's relationship ended up, besides them getting back together. It just seemed Jackson wanted to hurry and start her new book which apparently is the sequel to this one.

One word can describe this book. Trite. This book is so very bad, from the cliched conversations to the overuse of quotation marks. Who talks like this? I have been trying to read this book for 3 1/2 months and can't stop mentally rolling my eyes enough to get very far. I can do without what she thinks is romance and stick to the suspense, but even that is far from satisfying. I love the true crime and suspense genre. The Hannibal Series by Thomas Harris is one of my favorites. But this...this is neither suspenseful nor intriguing. I think that perhaps I'll try to finish it and read it to the obvious conclusion that the characters somehow can't seem to figure out. But I can guarantee that this is the last Lisa Jackson book that I will ever read.

Absolute Fear was very similar to Shiver. There is a lack of variety among the characters and the plot. Many of the characters seem to be carbon copies of each other.

I LOVED THIS BOOK, NOW I HAVE TO BUY THE NEXT ONE, LOST SOULS, CANT WAIT TO GET IT.

By the end of this book, it seemed that everyone in it was related to everyone else and about the only person who wasn't a blood relative to the killer(s) and/or victims was the reader, and the family tree was so convoluted I began to question my own lineage. And wasn't it convenient that all the people involved in the cover up or frame up or who were unwitting victims all had names that were palindromes? What about the tatoos? Honest, I knew what the tattoo meant the first time it was mentioned and the second time and the third time. I wanted to scream at the detectives in this one: Wake up, idiots! And these were detectives I liked in previous works by Lisa Jackson. This book was kind of interesting for the excitement end of it, but the mystery was no mystery (except when the ultimate bad guy turned out to be someone we hardly even meet in the book) and the romance between Cole and Eve was simply ridiculous. He was so abnoxious, I can't believe Eve was so shallow as to have any interest in him at all. On the other hand, why would this intelligent rising star of a lawyer be wasting his time with such a self-destructive airhead as Eve Renner? Maybe it was because he managed to lose his apparently substantial amount of accumulated wealth in about a month. He lost his house, his car...Everything and for what? Because he was a suspect? Cole definately needed a better financial planner. Okay, he had a great body and she was willing to do the deed with him whenever oppurtunity knocked. I wonder how their relationship will be in twenty years when he isn't the great hunk anymore and she's still hopping into bed with any stud who has a little animal magnetism. I don't know what to make of the explanation of the 'phantom' sperm. That was just way too convenient for the bad guy. Then there was Kristi, who found out late in the book how she was related. Kristi quit her day job on the off chance that she might be successful as a writer of true crime stories. Did she ever stop to think she might have to live for maybe a couple weeks before she started receiving royalty checks? How about an advance check if she had even started to write something? I don't know how that works, but can an unpublished, unknown and even unstarted writing writer earn a living? Anyway, I continue to count myself a Lisa Jackson fan, but this one was close to puting me over the edge and saying no more. I look forward to her next novel, but ABSOLUTE FEAR was not up to her usual standards. Bring on LOST SOULS! Maybe I'll re-read SHIVER or THE MORNING AFTER. Those are Lisa Jackson at her best.

Not what I expected after reading "The Exorcist". This book features the befuddled Detective Kinderman. Jeez Louise! I could not read one page without going back and scratching my head. Kinderman's ridiculous, annoying and totally useless musings ruined what I guess could have been a good book - couldn't make it past 30 pages. Lose Kinderman and this book would have been about 50 pages long.

This book is about Giminy killer, I didn't read my book yet, but it should be about the movie. There should be movie tie-ins.

When I read "The Exorcist", I was scared out of my wits. Then for years, there was nothing from Blatty until the early 80's when he wrote this follow-up novel, "Legion". So, what did we get in "Legion"? Well, we got info-mania, which was becoming the rage then, as Blatty demonstrated with Lt. Kindermans' endless trivia lectures as he tried to make sense of the so-called "Gemini" serial murders, with the modus operandi the same as the dead Gemini killer. And yes, Kinderman's stereotype IS shameful.

But, tucked inside this horror-meets-procedural story is a truly creepy short-short story trying to climb out as a character who is a neuro-surgeon struggles with two secrets: his evolving brain disease and his obsession over his lover's death, which makes him explore the "other side" with tape recorders in his efforts to contact her.

Here is where Blatty fascinates us; and here is where you'll realise, slowly, that you've SEEN this somewhere before...oh, yes, that's it! Michael Keaton's forgettable movie "White Noise" of a few years ago which pretty much stole the idea.

How did this guy Blatty get pushed out of the water by Stephen King? Not many people know about him unless you've watched or read (insert Clarance Thomas joke here) The Exorcist. This is numero three in the Exorcist series and what a way to end it. This book has a multi-dimentional character about it that Stephen King could only dream of attempting in one of his stories. There's a great story in this book(horror and detective), believable characters, actual places, etc. I love the author picture on the back too. It's so late 70's Burt Reynoldesque. If you want a good read for this Halloween season or really just anytime, check it out!

William Peter Blatty's "Legion" isn't so much a sequel to "The Exorcist" as an enjoyable example of a genuine Catholic making sure, really making sure, that he believes in God--sometimes using embarrassing plot devices/tools to achieve that end.

I oscillated between loving Lieutenant Kinderman and absolutely hating him. If I were Atkins, his second in command, I would respectfully turn around at some point in the metaphysical catastrophe and say: "Lieutenant, I know you've read a lot of books. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if you were an extremely educated man, particularly in theology. But there are times when your dandyish intellectualism gets a little overbearing and while I love your last fifteen paragraphs about how evolution HAS to lead to an afterlife, I think it's time we attend to this whole business of Father Damien Karras being trapped inside of a serial killer in a mental ward--after all, that's what this book is about. Then we can talk philosophy."

Still, the conversations between Kinderman, Father Dyer, Amfortas and Tommy Sunlight especially are irresistible for any believer/nonbeliever who likes to think on a cosmic and human level simultaneously. There is that chilling, eviscerating atmosphere that only Blatty can produce (I wish he'd write more) as though Satan is going to pop up at any minute as only this author could depict. I cannot believe, though, that a guy as obviously educated (and don't we know it) as Blatty would take EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomenon) seriously. He's really grasping there: the chapter in which Kinderman reads the letter Amfortas sent to Father Dyer
is enough to make one blush. Apparently all the dead do are hang out and quote the Bible while being recorded in open air.

The origins of Tommy Sunlight and the events which lead to his possession of Karras aren't very satisfying. There are bone chilling moments but on the whole Blatty could have done much more with this very vital piece of the novel, which was done far better in the film version with George C. Scott. At the end, Tommy Sunlight simply fades out and that's it. People may call the end of the movie adaptation unduly dramatic but it certainly beats this. Anyway, this is a must read for fans of "The Exorcist" just for closure and maybe to provoke some deep thought.

Great book - until the ending. WTF? Did Perry have a deadline to make? It was so abrupt... not his best work. Very disappointing.

This book was a total waste of time. I am still wondering why I didn't just abandon it along the way!!

I have only read first 2 chapters, and am at burn out already as this book seriously needed a proof reader simply because they say first and last names way to many times in a paragraph instead of just using first name only .Example is the name Hugo Poole is used 4 times in 1 paragraph when they are only talking about him , and is same for other characters in first 2 chapters . I am almost certain this cannot be the best of Thomas Perry .

As a fan of Thomas Perry's, I was a bit disappointed in this book. He does his usual wonderful job of creating settings and bringing action to life. Each scene is carefully crafted, and many are full of the kind of suspense at which he so often excels. The premise of the book is compelling and it has one of the best beginnings he's written.

So why three stars? Perry is a master at describing settings, creating unlikely but richly defined characters, and, most of all, fascinating pursuits with a stream of identity changes mixed in. In Nightlife, this combination of skills never really gels into a tight story.

1. The ending is frightfully predictable. Long before the final clash, you can see it coming; and, when it does it's abrupt and uninteresting.

2. The romance is superfluous. It adds nothing substantive to either the plot, or our understanding of Catherine Hobbes, the heroine of the story.

3. The events are episodes that are somewhat loosely connected. The continuity of the pursuit that fuels his best works such as Butcher's Boy and the early Jane Whitfield books is missing.

Read this one at the beach or while on an airplane. It's Perry after all, and still worth the time.

The twists and turns in this book keeps you on the edge of your seat. I found myself enjoying an evil serial killer way too much. I highly recommend this book.

I love to read suspense thrillers. This is one of the best that I have ever read! It kept me guessing until the very end. Not the typical serial killer book. Also very different that most of Saul's books.

This abridged audio book is the worst I've listened to having been cut from over 400 pages down to 3 very short audio CDs.

The story doesn't flow from one event to another, instead people dissappear during conversations, past conversations are referenced that never took place in the audio book, and people travel miles between one sentence and the next.

To abridge this book they gave the paperback to a monkey in the zoo, let him randomly tear out pages, and what was left they gave to Lee Merriweather to read. It's a confusing mess.

Never again will I purchase an abridged version of a book. I've read the book and all I can say is "Poor John Saul".

I enjoy a good mystery and horror book as much as the next person. But I also enjoy being surprised about where the plot takes me. Nothing irritates me more than being able to predict what happens with the story after reading 1/2 of the book. Unfortunately, this is what occurred with John Saul's Black Lightning. In addition, the book's plot moves very slow, and I felt almost forced to keep turning the pages. Definitely not a book that you feel you have to keep reading.

I thought the book was okay. It started out with a man on death row who maintains his innocence and the journalist who played a role putting him away. However, I had no idea that this book was sci-fi. I do not care for this genre but it was still rather suspenseful. The ending left a lot to be desired but it's a good book if you're looking to kill time in a waiting room or on an airplane.

Black Lightning,

Cliché ?

Many writers use this type of story often. Does this take away from the enjoyment of the read? I say NO! I rather enjoyed this book. If I would have listened to what other reviewers had to say I would have never have read John Saul.

Anne and Glen Jeffers find themselves trapped in a nightmare that seems to have no end. A serial killer seems to be haunting them from the dead. Anne and her husband are taken on a whirlwind of a ride.

I thought the book moved at a nice pace, it kept me turning pages. I do not like to give away plot so I will just continue with my overall opinion.

This book does borrow many elements from horror books that have gone in the past, but I believe this genre has plenty of room for more books like this. Overall this book was fun and enjoyable. I never felt bogged down or bored. The pages turned at a nice pace and the story flowed smoothly. John Saul has a very smooth way of telling a tale. Although this book may not be great, I felt it was good and deserved much better treatment than many reviewers gave it. I liked the book well enough to purchase other Saul books.

I have just finished Faye Kellerman's magnificent historical novel, and the emotion is still with me. There have been many novels, and even more histories, describing the horrors of the Nazi years, but Kellerman, like me, is interested in causes. How did Hitler come to power, and why did Germans support him?

(NOTE: In my first novel,The Heretic (Library of American Fiction), I dealt with the causes of the Spanish Inqisition. In the interests of full disclosure, I must add that Ms. Kellerman gave me a very gracious blurb comment for that book.)

The preface to Straight Into Darkness, written by an unnamed person, establishes a mood of darkness, doom, anti-semitism, woman-demeaning, pro-Hitler, unrepentant anger. "It is simple," he writes. "Germany didn't really lose the Great War ... Blame others, especially blame Jews ... Why should we take responsibility."

Kellerman chooses to tell the story of Hitler's rise to power in Munich in the manner she knows best, a complex detective story that allows her full rein to incorporate the horrors and pressures of the early Hitler years. There are several murders, and more than a few suspects, and the answers lie always just a bit out of reach.

It is interesting to see Kellerman skillfully developing new characters, after years of her detective series, where she and her regular readers know Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus as if they were family members.

In 1930s Munich, there are no heroes, but in Axel Berg and Martin Volker, Kellerman has created two intriguing characters, each competent and with some moral compass, but also seriously flawed, sometimes working together and then in conflict with each other. We don't know until Kellerman's thundering conclusion, which I will not share with you, how each finally resolves his response to those pressures.

"Straight Into Darkness" is Ms. Kellerman's second historical novel, The The Quality of Mercy being the first. I for one hope it is not the last.

Having now published two novels myself --- A Good Conviction, a NYC-based legal thriller which tells the story of a young man wrongly imprisoned in Sing Sing for a murder he did not commit by a Manhattan ADA who may have known he was innocent ... and The Heretic, a historical novel describing the persecution of a family of secret Jews by the Catholic Church on the eve of the Spanish Inquisition --- I have devised a self-education project to help me become more attuned to the techniques and styles of other authors, and thus (hopefully) become a better novelist myself.

"Straight Into Darkness" is one of the novels I've read as part of this self-education project.

I'm organizing my thoughts into various categories relevant to writing, such as ... "beginnings" ... "conflict" ... "characters" ... and others, and I've posted my observations as a blog, which turns out to be a wonderful way for me to organize and retrieve my notes.

This also puts my thinking in the public domain. So if you'd like to see my evolving comments about writing novels, I invite you to take a look at my "Education of a Novelist" blog.

You can reach my blog by searching the web for "weinstein education of a novelist."

LEW WEINSTEIN

Reading a story about a serial killer set in Munich in 1929, you know there is not much room for a happy ending. The people the killer doesn't kill are going to suffer through a terrible war; if they're Jews, they're going to get gassed.

This is a personal story for Faye Kellerman. She is an Orthodox Jew whose father served in the Second World War and was part of the forces that liberated the concentration camps. She never got his whole story while he was alive, and this fills her with regret. But Straight into Darkness isn't his story, it's an exploration of Munich at the tipping point into Nazism. She did a ton of research for this book, traveling to Munich and meeting with Germans who survived that time. The result is a city that comes to life in sights, sounds, and even smells.

City Homicide Inspector Axel Berg is no hero. He's a persistent cop who doggedly pursues his case. His superior is a power-hungry sadist who values Berg's skills but mistrusts his independence. Meanwhile Berg pilfers evidence and slaps around his teenaged Jewish mistress. Munich in 1929 is a fearful city. It is barely under the rule of law, and the rival political factions are practically private armies, marching around in signature uniforms. The Nazis brownshirts are the most egregious, but there are others who are ready to brawl with them and only the unarmed police are there to prevent mob violence. Times are bad for everyone, with the country emerging from hyperinflation and basic necessities like coal and coffee too expensive for working people to take for granted. If the Jews are responsible for every problem, that takes the responsibility from the government, the police, individuals, and society.

This is an excellent book, with the extra spark provided by Kellerman's passion. Mob-think never goes away, and if we can understand past events with the perspective provided by distance, we are closer to understanding our own time.

I read this book without being prejudiced about Faye and her previous works, this book in my opinion an exceptional fictional experience of the 1920's Germany, The political and social scenario's can be experienced and felt.
You can alost smell Hitler, his Brown Shirts and the streets of Munich.
Hitler's uprise and his impact on the German youth, overall characterization of Munich and depiction of post war depression is what held my attention.
Nicely tied with the murders and lead characters with personalities that almost seem real.
I highly recommend this book - but please note that it contains some disturbing sexual and voilent accounts.

Faye Kellerman has made a reputation for herself as a detective novelist, writing books mostly with modern characters, the primary ones being a LA cop and his wife. She's also done some other stuff, one involving strange supernatural events and characters, another a cop thing with her husband, and some years ago she wrote a historical novel set in England several centuries ago.

This current book is a historical novel too, but the main character (Axel Berg) is a police inspector in 1929 Munich. As the story begins, he's confronted with the murder of a young married woman whose body has been found in a large park in the city. From there, things get complicated. A second body is discovered, and while the plot is thickening, we also learn that Axel isn't exactly an angel himself. As if things weren't complicated enough, Hitler and the Nazis try to take advantage of the murders by blaming them on the Jews. Berg's not convinced: whatever else he is, he isn't an anti-semite.

The book operates on a number of levels. Kellerman's handling of the main character and Germans of the era in general is generally fair, and interesting. She doesn't pull any punches with regards to the anti-Semitism (not surprising: she and her husband are both Jewish) but she doesn't make the Jewish characters in the story into saints, or all the Gentiles monsters, either. There are many layers and nuances to the characters, and not all of them are immediately apparent.

I will not one semi-negative thing. The author has several of the characters saying at various points in the book that Hitler was illegitimate. At one point someone recounts that this was in a newspaper, and several of the characters then discuss whether it's the case or not, even adding to the story by saying that Hitler's father married his mother while she was pregnant, to provide legitimacy for the child before he was born. I've never read anything like this in any of the books I've read about Hitler (and I've read more than a few). I have no idea if such things were in the press at the time in Germany, but nothing like this occurs in the modern writing about Hitler.

That said, this is an excellent book. I enjoyed it a great deal. It *is* a bit long, but if you stick with it you'll find it a very good book.

This novel begins with the words of an old artist in New York in the year 2005: "red is the color of shame...the shame of my generation, of a people who accepted genocide as the most expedient way to restore the Fatherland to purity and greatness...[we] must carry the burden of shame and guilt for [our] elders' unspeakable acts."

Straight Into Darkness is set in Munich in 1929 and conveys with accuracy the cultural and political atmosphere of Munich in the years when Hitler's threat was not yet taken seriously. Kellerman decided to write this book after a book promotion tour to Germany in 2001, which led to her discovery of her father Oscar Marder's experiences as a Jewish GI stationed in Germany during World War II. In her preface, she mentions many of the historians of Bavaria and Munich which she consulted in person - the historical facts and descriptions are well integrated into her story for the most part. Her picture of the neighborhoods, the class structure, the architecture and decorating styles of the period, as well as of the squalor of the working classes, is visually and olfactorially involving, making vivid a vanished time.

The police face many moral dilemmas in the course of solving the murder cases, as well as in dealing with the personalities, political beliefs, and demands of their superiors and fellow policemen. The historical setting adds a fascinating layer to these routine conflicts. "So easily I could have become one of them," says the old artist at the end - and as I read, I had to agree. No one's hands are clean in this book, not even Axel Berg's, and yet his choices must be respected. I found Kellerman's treatment of Germans and Jews to be quite evenhanded; she goes into detail to convey the historical roots (the first war's treaties, the Weimar republic, and the fall of the Wittelsbacher dynasty in Bavaria) that led ordinary Munich citizens to be vulnerable to Hitler's rhetoric. I had read the facts - but this book shows us people enraged and humiliated by these events.

Berg dialogues with his teenage son Joachim:
Joachim: "It disturbs me that the Nazis mock anyone who disagrees with them. Sometimes I speak up...but sometimes I don't."
Berg: "Part of being clever, Joachim, is knowing when to hold one's tongue."
Joachim: "But being clever isn't the same as doing the right thing."

Joachim, near the book's end: "I know you don't like Herr Hitler, but he knows the problems that face us. And he's working hard to bring the German race back to glory ----"

Yes, there is a "love story" - Axel loves his wife but has a Jewish mistress, Margot. I cannot remember ever reading such an honest rationale for infidelity as this one:
"Britta was agreeable in bed, warm and enthusiastic - a far better lover than Margot. He strayed not because he lacked desire for his wife. He strayed because of the bitterness of her harsh speech...because his wife's flexibility was morally superior to his rigid stubbornness. He strayed because sex with Margot held no demands."

All that good stuff aside, the search for the murderer involves a tangled web of family relationships that you'd better be awake enough to follow. If you like less complex solutions, you won't be happy with the resolution of the mystery itself. It's not predictable, though! And the ending is not "happy" in the usual sense. The assortment of policemen are sometimes difficult to keep track of, but one stands out - Kommissar Martin Volker - a complex and unforgettable character. At the end, you will discover another reason why the painter paints in red....

I happened to watch One Life To Live when the book came out and I enjoyed wacthing it. It was so great that the storyline became the plot of the book that Marcie thought up.

Excellent book loved it was better then seeing it on the soap opera. Would love for her to write more books. Keeps you on the edge of your seat and guess who did it.

The synopsis of the book made it sound fairly descent, but I was wrong. The first murder took up 50% of the book leaving me to wonder when were these other "murders" going to happen. The main character Jamie seemed flat and boring. She was engaged to her boss and yet seemed to not really care for him or even show him any respect. (If you read the book you'll know what I mean). The last "murders" did not happen until the last 35 pgs of the book. By then I sorta figured who the murderer was and not really surprised. I do not reccommend spending more than what I spent on this book (1.50) because that's all it's worth. If you want a good murder mystery read a James Patterson book.

I have to admit that this was my second time attempting to read the book. I was not able to get through it the first time. However, i was really into the book the second time around. Michael malone wrote a great mystery novel. You do not need to be a fan of "One Life To Live" to enjoy it. There was one point which I forgot that this book was "written" by Marcie Walsh, which is a character on "One life to live".

I bought this book as a gift for my mother. She's an avid fan of the show and couldn't wait to really read this book that everyone was talking about on her favorite soap.

Take it for what it is...a book written by a fictional character on a Soap...it's a read for fun! If you really like the show, I'm sure you will love it.

I think it was my mom's way of kind of being part of the action because everyone on the show was reading it. I thought it was a cute concept. Anway, again, she loved it and I have since read the book myself. I do not watch the show or know anything about the show, but I did enjoy this book as well. It was a really fun and easy read. So whether you do watch the show or do not, I honestly believe you will like this book. I did and my mother loved it.

I'm glad I could do this for my mom. She deserves something nice every now and then...a little "I love you just because gift" never hurt anyone and books are great for that! Thanks for listening to me ramble!!