Publisher Description
In recent weeks, three young women have been brutally assaulted and murdered in the city of Philadelphia. Lt. William Fogarty, a time-toughened cop, hardened by personal tragedy, is shocked by the brutality of the crimes. His only lead comes from medical examiner Josef Tanaka. Half Japanese and half American, Tanaka, a skilled practitioner of the martial arts, claims to recognize the method used in the attacks: a karate strike known as nukite, or spear hand. Fogarty has nowhere else to turn.
An unlikely combination, Fogarty and Tanaka, forced together by circumstance and neither completely trusting the other, they conduct a desperate hunt, trawling the streets of Philadelphia and into the dangerous underbelly of the killing arts.
Pursuing the Mantis, a creature who uses the flesh of his victims in a sadistic, macabre ritual of self-purification, while Fogarty and Tanaka endanger the lives of those closest to them as they inch perilously close to the precipice of their own worst fears and weaknesses.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Philadelphia is plagued by a series of psychosexual killings that will repulse and engross readers of this slightly over-the-edge thriller about a martial artist gone mad. Scruffy homicide Lt. Bill Fogarty gets nowhere on the case until smooth Joey Tanaka, a young half-American assistant medical examiner (and All-Japan Championship karate finalist), identifies wounds on an art student/stripper victim as typical of Praying Mantis Kung Fu--a karate style based on the insect's attack moves. La Plante's unbalanced half-Vietnamese villain seeks perfection by mimicking the mantis's deadly mating ritual: he sexually attacks his victims, male and female, before savagely doing them in. A police sketch of the killer resembles Tanaka, which worries Fogarty. Then the killer ruthlessly batters Fogarty and kidnaps Tanaka's lover, Rachel--raising the stakes. La Plante flirts with the supernatural when Tanaka's relationship with the killer leads to a final face-off. The mixed ethnic cast reads true--if somewhat stereotyped--in this Bruce-Lee-meets-city-cop adventure. The author, who is married to Lynda La Plante, creator of the Prime Suspect series for PBS, has previously published several books in the U.K. Major ad/promo.
