DEVIL'S HEAVEN

Detective Neil Hockaday's fourth mystery begins as, returning from Ireland with his new bride, he gets involved in a search for a serial killer in New York's gay community, a search that involves Hockaday's confrontation with some personal inner demons.

In the dark and magical Drown all the Dogs (1994), special-crimes cop Neil Hockaday left New York City to probe his roots in Ireland, where he communed with dead and living ghosts, drank lots of Guinness and talked politics and philosophy. Now Hock's back in the Big Apple, on furlough from the force while doing his best to stay off the sauce. His new wife, black, New Orleans-born Ruby Flagg, returns to her high-level advertising job on the day that the beaten and mutilated body of Frederick Crosby, her odious former boss, is discovered in his apartment, a leather mask across his face and his arms and legs nailed to the floorboards. At the same time, someone is killing off gay men in the city, crimes given scant attention by the NYPD. Hock, helping out a PI buddy, unofficially hunts the killer and probes the Crosby murder, his footsteps dogged by a homophobic cop who shows up at every crime site. The narrative is well-plotted, but Adcock's prose here is less effectively lyrical than over-the-top (e.g., the account of Ruby's punching out Crosby in a former encounter) as Hock, somewhat self-pityingly, struggles with demons public and private for control of his sensitive Hibernian soul. Author tour.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

NYPD detective Neil Hockaday is a recent probationary graduate of Abstinence U., where he was enrolled at the insistence of his new bride, Ruby, and his friend, private cop Davy Mogaill. On Ruby's first day back at her Madison Avenue job after a stint in avant-garde theater, one of the firm's partners calls in sick. Later that day, his naked, mutilated body is found nailed to the floor of his apartment. Hockaday would normally have pulled the case, but since he's still on administrative leave, it goes to noted homophobe King Kong Kowalski. Since the victim was gay, it's likely Kowalski won't conduct an aggressive investigation. Hockaday, concerned for Ruby's safety and desperately needing something to keep his mind off demon alcohol, begins his own inquiry under Davy Mogaill's private-eye ticket. But the case turns out to be much more complex than a simple passion killing, and Hockaday must face it from outside the force and without his beloved whiskey. The fourth Hockaday book continues a stellar series, but aren't there enough mystery protagonists already battling alcohol addiction? It's a trend on the verge of becoming a clich{‚}e. Wes Lukowsky