A Killer's Essence
A Novel
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
"A doozy of a doom-laden crime story" from the author of Small Crimes—now a major film—and The Caretaker of Lorne Field (The Washington Post).
Stan Green is a jaded New York City cop assigned to the most shocking homicide of his career—and he finds only one witness, a neurologically damaged recluse subject to demonic hallucinations. Then the murderer strikes again. Stan's best hope is a man who claims to be surrounded by ghoulish apparitions. And there's just a chance this witness isn't insane, but instead terrifyingly perceptive . . .
Dave Zeltserman's grisly crime novel is backgrounded by the 2004 ALCS playoffs, when the Red Sox triumphed over the Yankees. A knuckle-whitening, surprising, and compelling trip into Stan's obsession with a brutal case, this serial-killer mystery is Zeltserman's darkest, most gripping work yet.
"Zeltserman's lean but muscular style, so evident in A Killer's Essence and The Caretaker of Lorne Field, is just as sharply honed here . . . Riveting." —The Boston Globe
"This eerie thriller deftly blurs the lines between madness and the perception of reality." —The Star-Ledger
"[A] chilling page-turner attuned to the most discerning of avid crime lovers. Well written and well paced. Recommended." —New York Journal of Books
"Zeltserman's signature creepiness is available here and there, but what really drives this novel is the engaging portrait of an honest, hardworking cop who, on the job and off, gives the best he's got, knowing how rarely it will be enough." —Kirkus Reviews
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Zeltserman's uneven stand-alone, a crime thriller set in New York City in 2004, NYPD Det. Stan Green's boss dispatches him one night to a lower Manhattan crime scene, where the corpse of a woman, eventually identified as Gail Laurent, has been found. Laurent's killer shot her once in the face, twice in the chest, and also cut off three of her fingers. Surveillance video leads Green to Zachary Lynch, who witnessed the murder. To Green's frustration, Lynch, who suffered an accident causing brain damage that left him unable to see people in the usual way, can only describe the criminal's clothing. Green is sure that the sadism of the crime means that a serial killer is responsible, but leads are scarce, and personal problems, especially Green's strained relationship with his children, who live with his ex in Rhode Island, intrude. Zeltserman (Small Crimes) convincingly portrays the daily grind of police work, but the plot's resolution will satisfy few.
