|
[ Home ]
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
Chicago police detective Ed Comparetto begins to wonder whether the serial killer he is hunting down is flesh and blood or a ghost. He initially encounters the man face to face, without realizing he is the killer, while investigating the brutal slaying of a gay man. Timothy Bright claims to have discovered the body. The only problem with Bright as a witness, Ed discovers, is that he died nearly two years earlier in a similar brutal slaying. Unfortunately, this fact is brought to his attention only when his commander suspends Ed for fabricating his report. Ed has already begun to have an uneasy working relationship with his superior as a result of Ed’s having outed himself in a gay publication. Ed had felt that with this case his homosexuality could finally come in handy, permitting him some secret knowledge. But clearly the commander welcomes the opportunity to let Ed go; he is unwilling even to consider there might be a valid explanation for the apparently false report. Ed, however, cannot let go of the case: ". . . one of his own had fallen." As a result of his dogged pursuit, new possibilities open up in his own personal life. While in the Chicago Public Library searching out information about Bright’s murder, Ed encounters librarian Peter Howle. There is some degree of immediate chemistry between the two men. Even though Ed is still suffering from a recent breakup with his former boyfriend, he invites Peter over, and a budding romance begins. Soon in his private investigation, Ed begins to suspect what the reader has known from almost the beginning: that Bright is the killer. But how can a dead man be a serial killer? Can a ghost really be enacting vengeance for his own vicious murder? For much of the length of the case, the reader is as uncertain as Ed is. As the suspense mounts, along with the number of deaths, the city and the very landscape begin to exude an atmosphere of ghostly menace. Coupled with this sense of the uncanny is the question of how Bright is targeting his victims. Despite Ed’s hope that his own sexuality will give him an advantage, he is slow to realize that killer and victim are connecting in a Chicago chatroom on Men4HookUpNow. (The novel’s title stands for 'Instant Message.') The victims themselves are a strange assortment: the lonely, the desperate, the promiscuous. The reader is not led to feel much for any of them. Using shifting points of view, the author tells the story from the vantage points of the suspended detective, his new boyfriend, the killer, the killer’s aunt, and several of the victims. In a work that is more plot than character-driven, the character that the reader comes to know best is probably the unsavory killer himself. He cleverly manipulates his victims to do as he wants. He starts playing mind games with Ed, actually stalking him. Tension builds as Bright demonstrates his seemingly preternatural knack of getting into both his intended victims’ and the detective’s safe zones. In creating his suspense thriller, the author uses several of the hoariest stereotypes in mysteries and, to his credit, tries to breathe new life into them. We have the openly gay detective who identifies with the gay community while remaining relatively uncomfortable with much of the sex scene. We have the demented killer who was sexually abused as a child and who as a result becomes a predator himself. The killer also seems somehow to have supernatural abilities to influence others. We have the child molester, now an AIDS victim still in self-denial despite being in the last stages of the disease. We have the heedless gays who continue to go for anonymous sex despite having a killer on the loose, one of whom even seems to deserve his fate as retribution for his having victimized another male. We have glimpses of a twin who must play some part in the mystery. We have an emotionally cold socialite who is more interested in appearances than in nurturing two orphan lads. And in a brief cameo we even have the mother who remains convinced that her gay adult son is only going through a phase. Throughout the novel, in fact, there are varying degrees of conflicted feelings about sexuality. All in all, IM is a disturbing work to experience.
Reviewed by Drewey Wayne Gunn, March 2007
[ Top ]
QUICK SEARCH:
Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
[ Home ]
| 
