Naked Cruelty
A Carmine Delmonico Novel
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3.3 • 15 Ratings
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
Carmine Delmonico returns in another riveting page-turner by international bestselling author Colleen McCullough.
America in 1968 is in turmoil and the leafy Holloman suburb of Carew is being silently terrorized by a series of vicious and systematic rapes. When finally one victim finds the courage to speak out and go to the police, the rapist escalates to murder. For Captain Carmine Delmonico, it seems to be a case with no clues. And it comes as the Holloman Police Department is troubled: a lieutenant is out of his depth, a sergeant is out of control, and into this mix comes the beautiful, ruthlessly ambitious new trainee, Helen MacIntosh, daughter of the influential president of Chubb University.
As the killer makes his plans, Carmine and his team must use every resource at their disposal—including a highly motivated neighborhood watch, the Gentlemen Walkers.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Set in 1968, McCullough's uneven third Carmine Delmonico novel (after Too Many Murders) finds the Holloman, Conn., police captain facing multiple problems. On the crime front, a serial rapist calling himself Didus ineptus, the Linnaean name for the dodo bird, is increasing the violence of his attacks; a vandal strikes at a mall; incipient gang violence threatens area high schools; and the fate of a kidnapping victim strains resources. Within the department, everyone detests bright, beautiful, ambitious detective trainee Helen MacIntosh, the daughter of the president of Holloman's "world-famous institute of higher learning," Chubb University. One lieutenant, Corey Marshall, isn't working out, and another, Morty Jones, has a drinking problem. On the domestic front, Delmonico's wife, Desdemona, may be suffering from postpartum depression and is worsening by the day. The admirable Delmonico holds this character-driven novel together, but awkward plot twists and a climax more silly than shocking undermine credibility.
Customer Reviews
Don't waste your time OR money
Convoluted plot, a maze of secondary characters, blind alleys leading nowhere, massive lacunae in the narration, and the worst dialogue this side of translated instructions on how to build a Swiss watch, from the original Chinese. I finished it only to see how many red herrings would go unresolved. And the answer is, plenty. The end of the story is probably supposed to be shocking; instead, it is as banal as a sad-faced clown.