Tangled Web UK Review August 2009
Play Dead by
Richard Montanari
hbk out August 08
Published by Heinemann
at £12.99
Another American ‘detective duo’ thriller, this time not about the usual LAPD, but the PPD in Philadelphia. Two hardened detectives, Jessica Balzano and Kevin Byrne are assigned to the Cold Cases squad, adding the new popular theme of re-examining old cases to that hardy annual, serial killings.
In this book, the cold case turns out to be the harbinger of a clutch of gruesome murders, all perpetrated on ‘runaways’, girls who vanish from out-of-town homes and gravitate to the streets of Philly.
This is not a who-dunnit, as the killer appears from early on and the tension resides in the often desperate attempts of the two sleuths to prevent the next killing. The culprit is a twisted character who had a bad childhood (surprise, surprise!) at the hands of his father, a professional magician who goes downhill from drink and deteriorating performances. The son wishes to re-enact his father’s stage stunts, resulting in the deaths of a series of teenage girls by a variety of horrible means, including dismemberment, fire, drowning in a tank and multiple sword thrusts. The reader may be left wondering why such nastiness need be invented as fiction, when so much exists in reality, but the public palate seems to have been massaged in that direction. Agatha Christie and her ilk managed to write diverting and enjoyable books without mutilation and torture, but obviously that milder approach now bores the present generation.
The reason for serial killings being virtually obligatory in modern crime-writing, is probably due to the demand for thick books of one or two hundred-thousand words, which cannot be sustained by one homicide, as in the thinner tomes of the Golden Age.
This one is well-written, but they all these days or they would not have a hope in hell of being published. If you like a gritty, US cop story, with a touch of Thomas Harris thrown in, read this one.
(
Bernard Knight
ex Home Office Pathologist and author of the highly acclaimed Crowner John series)
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