Philadelphia homicide detective Kevin Byrne is slowly recovering from a being shot in the head on his last case. His partner, Jessica Balzano has been assigned to head the task force to find The Actor, a serial killer whose murders are staged like classic movie murders. But The Actor goes further. He tapes the murder, splices his work into a videotape of the original film and sneaks it back on the shelf of a video store for some poor customer to find and report to the police. Among the killings depicted include the shower scene from Psycho, the bathtub killing in Fatal Attraction among others.At the same time, a lowlife who Byrne put away has been released on a trumped up technicality. Byrne enlists the help of an earlier victim to help find him so Byrne can exact his own brand of justice.
Detective Balzano has to work through a dizzy array of potential suspects from an A-list producer, the uber-vicious assistant, another actor through the seedy S-M and porn underworld. As with most serial killers, there must be some connection between the victims, but these seem to have no connection whatsoever, at least until one particular clue pops up out or nowhere.
I really can't go into much detail without giving away too much. Nearly every chapter ends with a new twist that changes the reader's thought about who really is The Actor. Is there any connection between the two primary stories? And once the identity is revealed, we readers end up scratching our collective heads wondering what tiny clue was missed.
This is my first Montanari and it won't be my last. My wife seems to have a knack for rummaging through the sale rack at Barnes and Noble and finding a winner for me. That's how she found George Pelacanos. The combination of crime and the movies was an ideal hook for me (probably why I like so many Connelly books). The story was a flat out sprint right from the start. What was interesting was the shift from 3rd person to 1st person when we went into The Actor's mind. I'm trying to figure out just what is with crime writers whose last name ends sin a vowel? This guy is another superb crime writer of Italian descent that definitely will fit nicely in my pile of 'good books.'
East Coast Don
ECD,
ReplyDeleteI wasn't as excited about this one as you were, which is unusual. You called it a "dizzying array" of possible people who could be The Actor, but it was a bit too dizzying for me, too convoluted, in my opinion.
However, here is a question for Stella. The author writes, "When you're a cop, there are only two types of people in the world. Knuckleheads and cops. Them and us." Is that where Stella gets the title for his blog?
WCD