VIOLET HOUR H

Twenty years after a young woman is killed in their midst during a wild Halloween party at college, a circle of friends living in Cleveland falls prey to a brilliant serial killer hot for revenge.

A serial killer takes long-delayed revenge on the friends whom he blames for his girlfriend's heroin overdose in this consistently surprising if somewhat implausible novel of suspense. When Cleveland freelance reporter Nicky Stella hears from his cousin, Father Joseph LaCazio, of the messy heroin-related deaths of Father John Angelino and a young prostitute, Nicky smells a story that could get a loan shark off his back. Clued by brand marks on the drug wrapper, he calls in markers from black undercover narc Willie T. in order to get an interview with the dealer. Soon Nicky's legwork links more Cleveland murders to Fr. Angelino's, and a T.S. Eliot poem e-mailed to the priest's laptop provides a list of future victims. Nicky's underworld contacts lead him down a slime trail to the killer's lair, while the killer himself stalks the wife and daughter of his next intended victim. The likable, bumbling hero, the competent female characters and the distinct voices of a diverse, if cartoonish, cast distract from certain nagging questions about the premise. (Why, for example, does the killer wait 20 years to take his revenge?) Montanari (Deviant Way) keeps the reader deliciously off balance throughout, letting the novel accrue horrors and deft misdirections right until its gory end.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Quite a 20th reunion for the Case Western Reserve class of 1978: An avenger with an addiction to T.S. Eliot is killing off the members of the self-anointed AdVerse Society. The opening scene is something of an entrance exam. If you can buy the premise that Cleveland's Father John Angelino, a.k.a. Johnny Angel, would fall victim to a lethal heroin overdose and the removal of his eyes courtesy of his inability to resist the tempting flesh of Kiki Holt, the prostitute who sets him up for a killer who calls himself Mac, then you're ready for the rest of Mac's murderous peregrinations. It's quite a tour: Mac likes to trap his victims in helpless positions one at a time, remind them that they're doing penance for what happened to Julia Raines back in college, and torment them with 70s trappings--Rolling Stones recordings, videotaped episodes of The Love Boat, patchouli oil, lava lamps--before executing and mutilating them in ways nearly as ghoulish as getting them to sit through ABBA. Cheapjack journalist Nicholas Stella, a cousin of the priest who shared Johnny Angel's rectory, seems to be the only one to notice any common elements in the grisly chain that threatens not only such sleazeballs as epicene estate appraiser Geoffrey Coldicott and AdVerse faculty advisor Sebastian Keller, voyeuristic plastic surgeon Dr. Bennett Crane and hungry lesbian Jennifer Schumann, but also squeaky-clean Amelia Saintsbury, practically a single mother since her errant husband's confession of fumbling adultery. Wonder what order Mac will choose to pick off his victims, and whether he'll still be stoked on heroin, Eliot, and kinky sex when Montanari (Deviant Way, 1995) finally lets him get a crack at Amelia in this naughty, harmlessly thrilling Halloween for grownups? No reviewer could hope to outdo Nicky Stella's dazzling insight that ``this wasn't an Andrew Vachss novel.'' -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

A lot of novelists have trouble pulling off a last-minute surprise; in his second novel (after 1995's The Deviant Way), Montanari pulls off three of them, and they're real shockers. In 1978, a college Halloween party went haywire, and a young girl died. Now, 20 years later, someone is getting revenge for her death, killing the former partygoers in particularly gruesome ways, one at a time, until he's left with one person: the man who, in the costume of a pirate, was most responsible for the girl's death. It's up to freelance journalist Nick Stella to ferret out the killer. This is an especially interesting thriller because the identities of two principal characters are kept secret. But, unlike some writers, Montanari doesn't use suspense as a substitute for craftsmanship. The novel is, like the nameless killer's victims, well executed--and, like the killer himself, fiendishly twisted. A real page-turner. David Pitt