END GAME

A neurotically sensitive chess genius and a police inspector form a strange partnership to track down a ruthless killer who has divided Manhattan up like a huge chess board and is capturing pieces, or people, by killing them

The two writers who first collaborated as the pseudonymous Stryker in Death right have won three Edgars between them, but their work here is far below award caliber. Clunky writing and a hokey plot drag down this tale of Inspector Paul Regal, head of an elite NYPD drug unit that seems to be running out of luck and/or reliable snitches. Just as one of his top cops is murdered in East Harlem, Paul finds himself drawn into the hunt for a serial killer who marks his victims' foreheads with the initials of chess moves. The murders continue, Regal's wife has an affair with billionaire developer Oliver Storm, the inspector himself falls in love with the dead officer's old girlfriend and frets about the commissioner's lack of trust; then the decidedly soap-opera plot wraps up with a bloody--but neat--finale. Both a crooked cop and the "Monogram Killer" are too easily spotted in a narrative that generally lacks surprises or tension. The only relief comes in an unintentionally funny description of Storm's Trump-like vulgarity: "The deep purple plush wall hangings lent a dignified air . . . all the furnishings were low and tasteful."
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The first victim of New York's Monogram Murderer is a homeless man plucked from the Port Authority Bus Terminal and dumped on the Upper East Side with the letter P carved on his forehead. The second is a gay biker who's adorned with a K and deposited not far away. When a loudmouthed community activist becomes the third victim, Inspector Paul Regal realizes that the Monogram Murderer is trying to entice him into a deranged game of chess (with city blocks taking the place of the game board's squares), but not why the killer is so interested in him. He's not even a homicide dick, but the head of an elite drug force already rocked by murder and the whiff of rotten apples. As Regal's marriage to his fashion-model-turned-interior-designer wife crumbles, he drags reclusive, paranoid grandmaster Billy Abbott out of retirement to play his pieces, still wondering whether he can ever win the crazy game and what will happen if he does. The pseudonymous Stryker (Deathright, 1993) turns in another fast-paced, empty-headed performance, with a battle of wits more reminiscent of a demolition derby than a chess match. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.