Equinox: Serial Killer

In this literary thriller, Tim Roper and Paul Morel each become a character in the other's narrative: The watcher being watched. Their experiences of childhood abuse and murder are superimposed to produce a double vision of evil. Tim tells of growing up in the Deep North of Australia as an only child after World War II. He marks the Equinox of leap years with double sacrifices to Mithras, the soldier's God. After twenty years and a botched kill, he takes his leave but has to strike one last time. Meanwhile, Paul tells of a sabbatical in Sydney as a retiring Canadian professor who obsesses over tracking down the Equinox killer, and his own inability to complete a new gothic novel. These compulsions awaken repressed memories of growing up in Toronto as an only child, orphaned in an evil household. Tim and Paul's violent, sexual, and artistic experiences are silhouetted against their insistent introspections on a cast of mythical, historical, and literary figures.

Dr C. T. Patrick Diamond is Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto and the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of Canada. His major nonfiction works include The postmodern educator: Arts-based inquiries and teacher development (with Carol Mullen, New York: Peter Lang, 1999, 504 pp.), Teacher Education as Transformation: A Psychological Perspective (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1991, 140 pp.) and Distant Drummer (Sydney: McGraw-Hill, 1972, 216 pp). Since returning to Australia, he has been a consultant or adjunct professor at several Australian Universities. He specializes in arts-based narrative inquiry, a multidisciplinary form of educational research and representation that is grounded in literature, the visual and performing arts, and the humanities. He has three children and lives with his partner in Sydney, Australia.