Mirror Maze:: A Janek Novel - Hardcover

Bayer, William

3.53

100 ratings by Goodreads

9780679414599: Mirror Maze:: A Janek Novel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0679414592 ISBN 13: 9780679414599

Publisher: Villard, 1994

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While trying the solve the case of the man who was murdered by the woman he picked up in a bar, police detective Frank Janek reopens the society-murder investigation that has plagued Internal Affairs for years. 25,000 first printing. $25,000 ad/promo.

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From Publishers Weekly:

Bayer hit the bestseller lists with the first Frank Janek story, Switch , an entertaining thriller with few pretenses. With luck and a hype tailwind, his third Janek novel ( Wallflower was the second) may sell despite some arty baggage. NYPD Lieutenant Janek is working on the murder of a businessman in a midtown hotel. The victim was slipped a mickey, his room ransacked and "you are a total jerk" was written in mirror-writing on his chest with indelible marker. He was also shot and robbed of a prototype computer chip. A woman named Gelsey duped and robbed the guy while in the grip of an obsession caused by childhood sexual abuse. But she's really a good kid--and a talented painter. After Janek locates her, he helps her acknowledge that her father abused her with her mother's complicity, a realization that her nice (now dead) old shrink was unable to effect. Janek's investigation also leads to an old sex-scandal murder involving a very tangled web of kinkiness, greed, police corruption and betrayal. There are dozens of colorful characters but most of them are 2-D and Bayer's psychobabble and overheated language really dampen any thrills: in a face-off against two nasties, Janek muses there "was a rigor to the design these players made that reminded him of paintings by De Chirico showing lonely figures on vast Italian squares . . . he felt the same strong ambience of ritual, inevitability and fate." Janek's final situation--back in uniform on the streets--is equally preposterous. BOMC selection.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal:

Lieut. Frank Janek, the hero of Bayer's best-selling novel Switch ( LJ 6/1/84), is working on two difficult cases. One involves the murder of a man in a hotel room and a ring of women who prey on men looking for one-night stands. The other is a nine-year-old headache that haunts the NYPD: Janek goes to Cuba to interview a witness who could turn around the conviction of a wealthy man in prison for the brutal murder of his wife. It all seems straightforward until Janek realizes that each fact is distorted, and each truth hides another. Winner of the Edgar Award for Peregrine (o.p.), Bayer uses the maze to symbolize the multifaceted reality of life in general and police work in particular. With each entry in the Janek series, the reader understands him better. In his latest, Janek is stripped of his psychological and social facade and left to survive in the world without protection. An outstanding novel for all collections.
- Jo - Ann Vicarel, Cleveland Heights-University Heights P.L., Ohio
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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