Shadow Man - Softcover

Katzenbach, John

3.83

5,866 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0345386302 ISBN 13: 9780345386304

Publisher: Ballantine Books, 1996

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"CHILLING. . . TAUT SUSPENSE.
--The Boston Globe
Berlin, 1943. Few saw his face; none knew his name. In whispered circles he was known only as Der Schattenmann, a merciless catcher for the Nazis who was always there, smiling, when the trains took you away to Auschwitz. . . .
"A FIRST-CLASS THRILLER. . . A MASTERPIECE OF DETECTIVE SUSPENSE."--The Toronto Star
Miami Beach, present day. Retired homicide detective Simon Winter's lonely life takes an urgent turn when his terrified neighbor appears at his door. She has seen a ghost in the flesh, a demon from her past--Der Schattenmann. The next morning, Sophie is found strangled, her eyes locked open in terror.
"GRIPPING . . . CHILLINGLY FRIGHTENING . . . HARD TO PUT DOWN."--The Miami Herald
The police think it's just another homicide. But Winter knows the horrifying truth: an elusive killer is stalking Holocaust survivors in Miami. Now, after years of retirement, Winter must match wits with a sadistically smooth expert on death who lives for the thrill of the hunt, tortures for the rush of power, and murders to keep himself, and his history, hidden forever. . . .
AN ALTERNATE SELECTION OF THE BOOK-OF-THE-MONTH CLUB

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Review:

Simon Winter was once one of the best cops on the Miami homicide beat, but now he's just another retired guy with no relatives. He sticks his trusty gun in his mouth--and just as he's about to squeeze the trigger, his neighbor Sophie Millstein pounds on his door.

Sophie, a Holocaust survivor, says she's just caught sight of Der Schattenmann (the Shadow Man), who hunted down the Jews of Berlin. He was a "catcher," a Jewish man who worked for the Gestapo. Once you glimpsed the Shadow Man, nobody ever saw you again. But Sophie just saw him, she's sure of it, right here in Miami!

Simon doubts it, but when Sophie is murdered, he doesn't believe that Leroy "Hightops" Jefferson, the crack addict seen sprinting out of her apartment with her jewelry, did the deed. Why was Sophie's cat strangled? And when another Holocaust survivor dies, why does his suicide note omit one letter of his wife's name? Did he write it at gunpoint? Simon and young sleuths Walter Robinson and Espy Martinez hunt the Shadow Man, and even Leroy winds up showing a streak of heroism.

Besides a clever premise, Katzenbach--a Miami Herald veteran--packs a lot of vivid local color into his Edgar-nominated mystery about a town where drug killings are so common the cops call them "felony littering." But the characters are simplistic and the narrative pace sluggish by comparison with Katzenbach's World War II POW murder mystery, Hart's War. --Tim Appelo

About the Author:

John Katzenbach's first novel was the Edgar Award-winning IN THE HEAT OF THE SUMMER. He has been a criminal court reporter for the Miami Herald and the Miami News.

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