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Andrew Neville, a failing playwright, kills a stranger during a petty argument, and after meeting his victim's widow and child, he gains their confidence and slowly starts to become the man he murdered. 17,500 first printing.

As if in a dream, a washed-up Chicago playwright sleepwalks into murder, then into taking over the life of the man he killed. Nobody knows that Andrew Neville is staying in a friend's hunting cabin in Wisconsin when he gets into a trivial fight with a stranger that leaves the stranger dead. Afterward, Neville wipes out every sign of his presence from the cabin and heads back home without leaving any paper trail. Despite his lack of premeditation, he's committed the perfect crime, one that's left no trace at the crime scene or within Neville himself, who keeps waiting to feel remorse or horror but feels only a vague stirring of satisfaction and renewed purpose. When Neville realizes he'd known John Dempsey from a theater group years ago, he decides to attend his funeral, purloins Dempsey's display handkerchief from his decorously arrayed body, and introduces himself to Dempsey's lovely wife Claudia, an actress who's feeling more frozen out than ever by her in-laws. It's a romance made in hell, but Neville is perfectly willing to pursue it in his mild, circumspect way, even though Roland Scheiss, the horrid lawyer hired by the elder Dempseys to investigate their son's murder, makes it clear that he assumes Neville conspired with Claudia to kill her husband and intends to gather enough evidence to blackmail them for a sizable chunk of Dempsey's estate. It's obvious that Neville's state of trancelike equilibrium--as he ingratiates himself with a falcon Dempsey had been training and plots his theatrical comeback via a play of Dempsey's--can't last. But Dempsey's luminously understated narrative preserves a crystalline surface undisturbed by any ripple right up to the inevitable catastrophe, which is perhaps a bit too ironic for the generally hushed buildup. No matter. The spare, surrealistic mastery of just the right detail makes this Faust's most rewarding thriller since his return to fiction with In the Forest of the Night (1992). -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Sometime playwright Andrew Neville brutally murders a fellow writer in a peculiar hunting incident. He then proceeds to assume his victim's persona. Neville leaves his Chicago condo and insinuates himself into the lives of the victim's wife and child with the offer of help at a time of tragedy. As he sifts through personal effects and papers, he becomes more and more like the late John Dempsey, wearing his clothes, adopting his hairstyle, and falling in love with the widowed Claudia. Only the disgusting gumshoe hired by Dempsey's parents seems to suspect the truth, but he soon becomes victim number two. Neville proceeds to complete Dempsey's unfinished play, proposes marriage to Claudia, and plans a romantic life in Italy. Yet, ultimately, he finds that crime does not pay. Faust (Lord of the Dark Lake, Forge, 1996), a former pro baseball player, has crafted a tidy Hitchcockian tale that will be widely enjoyed. Recommended.?Susan Gene Clifford, Palos Verdes Lib. Dist., Rolling Hills Estates, Cal.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The talented Faust has written another stunning crime novel, conjuring up a plot of dark and nightmarish irony. Failed playwright Andrew Neville borrows a friend's remote cabin for a get-away-from-it-all weekend and decides to play he-man. But his borrowed bow and arrows become a deadly weapon when he encounters a lone hunter, and the two argue over a deer carcass. Neville kills the man, then conceals the crime. The victim turns out to be John Dempsey, a much changed friend from Neville's long-ago theater days. Dempsey soon becomes Neville's obsession; Neville attends his funeral, woos his beautiful widow, moves onto his estate, borrows his clothes, and even reworks a stage play Dempsey was writing. But the guilt over his crime eats away at Neville, and worse, a seedy detective smells a rat. Faust crafts an imaginative, provocative plot and fills his pages with characters who are at once familiar and terrifying. A thought-provoking, suspenseful, satisfying book that will stimulate readers' brains as well as quicken their pulses. Emily Melton