Steroid Blues
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- $3.99
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- $3.99
Publisher Description
John Winston Flint, prominent Philadelphia physician, has been systematically tortured to death. Every bone in his body has been shattered -- even the joints of his fingers and toes reduced to powder.
The doctor's hidden side is revealed when a police search turns up a collection of sadomasochistic videos in which Flint himself was the star performer -- and horrifyingly, one shows a brutal rape and apparent murder.
Fogarty and his friend and colleague, medical examiner Josef Tanaka, also discover that Flint was selling massive quantities of illegal steroids to hardcore bodybuilders. In a world where total physical prowess is the ultimate goal, and strength truly equals power, performance-enhancing chemicals are more than worth their weight in gold.
Nothing in Fogarty's experience has prepared him for this case, where each secret he uncovers seems to lead him farther from the truth, and where the darkest secret of all is written in the blood of two drug-enhanced, steroid supermen.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Philadelphia police detective Bill Fogarty and forensic pathologist Josef Tanaka are back in another volatile mixture of sadism and suspense from LaPlante (Mantis; Leopard). A local doctor is discovered dead in S/M gear, every bone in his body broken; in his closet, the police find a videotape that shows two men torturing, raping and possibly killing a masked and bound woman. One of the men is the dead physician, and Fogarty strongly suspects the other is Horst Nickles, white-supremacist body builder, gym owner and peddler of illegal steroids. When a shady videographer is murdered, grotesquely impaled on his camera tripod, Fogarty becomes convinced that Nickles is the killer. When Fogarty learns that body-builder Jack Dunne, brother of the videotaped woman, is bent on revenge, the narrative spins into a triangular stalking game as Dunne, Nickles and Fogarty head to a spectacular and gory climax. LaPlante's quick-cutting speeds the action along, albeit often at the expense of characterization, and pumped-up, steroid-crazed heavies provide more than enough menace. Sharp-eyed readers may guess the plot's wild climactic twist early on; even those who don't are more likely to be annoyed than wowed. Still, the relentless pace and grim action should satisfy most La Plante fans. Author tour.
