From Publishers Weekly
The conceit of this impossible-to-put-down thrillerthe story of the hunt for a serial killer-rapist who has concealed himself among a psychiatric asylum's insaneis that it was written in pencil by a madman on the walls of his apartment. More than 20 years ago, Francis Xavier Petrel, nicknamed C-Bird for the seabird his name evokes, was confined against his will in the Western State Hospital, a run-down residential mental health facility that rivals Kesey's Cuckoo's Nest for evil administrators and whacked-out inmates. A shy, frightened 21-year-old who endures a cacophony of disembodied voices, C-Bird is befriended by Peter the Fireman, nicknamed for the church he burned down with a pedophile priest still inside. (C-Bird and Peter appear almost normal amid the hospital's other catatonics, manic-depressives, psychopaths and psychotics.) Then they discover the raped and mutilated body of nurse Short Blond (nicknamed for her hair) stuffed into a storage closet. All evidence points to paranoid-schizophrenic inmate Lanky, who earlier in the day had identified Short Blond as an agent of evil, but Lanky claims the killing was the work of an invisible Angel of Death who committed the crime to save them from some unspecified devilish fate. C-Bird and Peter, knowing that Lanky has been unjustly accused, set out to find the real killer. They are joined by state prosecutor Lucy Kyoto Jones, who believes the killer is the same man who has committed other savage crimes beyond the walls of the hospital. Katzenbach (author of the bestsellers Just Cause and The Analyst) delivers an uplifting story of justice, friendship, mystery and, above all, the courage of certain men and women who rise up, no matter the circumstances, to defeat evil, no matter the consequences.
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From
The narrator isn't exactly a madman but, rather, someone whose madness is quieted by meds. "It is a very hard thing, in this time of ours, to be mad and middle-aged," hero Francis Petrel writes early on. Perhaps the best feature of veteran crime writer Katzenbach's latest is the way he fleshes out the everyday desperation of someone living on the fringes of society. Petrel receives an invitation to a reunion of former "guests" of the insane asylum his parents consigned him to as a teenager. This not very credible plot starter leads Petrel to investigate what horrors led to the hospital's closing, his thoughts especially revolving around the unsolved murder of a nurse. Intriguing, but far too long and too encumbered with Petrel's Byzantine thoughts to generate suspense. Still, the Edgar-nominated Katzenbach has a following, and this introspective tale will interest those who don't read thrillers for the thrills. Connie Fletcher
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