Katzenbach, John

The Madman's Tale: A Novel

It’s been twenty years since Western State Hospital was closed down and the last of its inmates reintegrated into society. Francis Petrel was barely out of his teens when his family committed him to the asylum, after his erratic behavior culminated in a terrifying outburst. Now middle-aged, he leads an aimless, solitary life housed in a cheap apartment, periodically tended to by his sisters, and perpetually medicated to quiet the chorus of voices in his head. But a reunion on the grounds of the shuttered institution stirs something deep in Francis’s troubled mind: dark memories he thought he had laid to rest, about the grisly events that led to Western State Hospital’s demise.

It begins in 1979, when twenty-one-year-old Petrel descends into the state-run purgatory of an overcrowded, understaffed Massachusetts mental hospital. Surrounded by inmates roaming the halls like drugged zombies and raving behind locked doors, well-meaning orderlies, jaded nurses, and patronizing doctors, Francis finds friendship with a motley assortment of fellow patients: a would-be Napoleon, a wise ex-firefighter, and a man obsessed with battling imagined devils. But there’s nothing imaginary about the young nurse found sexually assaulted and brutally murdered late one night after lights-out.

The police suspect an inmate, while patients whisper about visions of a white-shrouded “angel.” But the striking and mysterious prosecuting attorney who arrives to investigate has her own chilling theory—about the grim, telltale “signature” left on the victim’s body, a string of unsolved sex killings, and a very real devil who, by chance or design, has come to turn a madhouse into a slaughterhouse.

Now, with the past creeping back to haunt his thoughts, and nothing but a pencil and the bare walls of his bleak apartment, Francis surrenders to the overwhelming need to tell the story of those nightmarish days. But because the crime was never solved, it’s a story doomed to remain unfinished. Until, like Francis’s long-buried recollections, the killer resurfaces . . . with a vengeance.

A tour de force narrative journey through the eerily unpredictable mind of an utterly unusual hero, The Madman’s Tale will keep even the most astute thriller reader uncertain, unnerved, and unable to resist the tantalizing twists and turns of this fiendishly suspenseful shadow show.


From the Hardcover edition.

John Katzenbach has written eight previous novels: the Edgar Award¿nominated In the Heat of the Summer, which was adapted for the screen as The Mean Season; the New York Times bestseller The Traveler; Day of Reckoning; Just Cause, which was also made into a movie; The Shadow Man (another Edgar nominee); State of Mind; Hart¿s War, which was also a major motion picture; and The Analyst. Katzenbach has been a criminal court reporter for The Miami Herald and Miami News and a featured writer for the Herald¿s Tropic magazine. He lives in western Massachusetts.


From the Hardcover edition.

The Analyst

Penzler Pick, February 2002: This thriller from the author of Hart's War is addictive. Analyst Dr. Frederick Starks has just turned 53 and, on his birthday, receives a letter informing him that he has ruined the letter-writer's life and now his own life is about to be ruined.

Starks must solve a riddle, he is told. He must find out whose life he ruined within two weeks. If he does not, he must kill himself. If he does not kill himself, then those nearest and dearest to him will be killed. The letter is signed, Rumpelstiltskin. At first Starks is dismissive--but he does call relatives to see that they are all right. Not all of them are. In fact Starks is convinced that the letter writer is deadly serious when he discovers how the birthday of his 14-year-old great-niece was ruined. He must now engage in the game or be responsible for the lives of others.

While he works frantically to try and unlock the past and find whose life he could possibly have ruined, Rumpelstiltskin is also busy. Within hours of receiving that first shattering letter, one of Dr. Starks's patients throws himself under a subway train, though Starks knows the patient was not suicidal.

When the police tell him that a couple and a homeless woman saw the man jump, Starks tries to find them. He finds only the homeless woman, who tells him that she was given money by the couple to tell what she witnessed. Starks is certain that Rumpelstiltskin must be one of the couple, but he's wrong. It's even more sinister than that, and when he meets the accomplices, he realizes that his adversary has been planning his revenge for years.

Soon, Starks's life is spiraling downward. There is nothing hidden from Rumpelstiltskin. His credit cards, his bank accounts, his patients, his homes in Manhattan and in Massachusetts, his reputation--nothing and no one is safe as Starks races against time as his world shrinks and his options run out. The clock is ticking as he hunts a ruthless psychopath who always seems to be one step ahead of him. As Starks tries to figure out what to do besides react to his life spinning out of control, he uses his training, his dwindling resources, and every weapon available to him to combat this relentless and deadly foe. --Otto Penzler

Happy fifty third birthday, Doctor. Welcome to the first day of your death. Dr. Frederick Starks, a New York psychoanalyst, has just received a mysterious, threatening letter. Now he finds himself in the middle of a horrific game designed by a man who calls himself Rumplestiltskin. The rules: in two weeks, Starks must guess his tormentor’s identity. If Starks succeeds, he goes free. If he fails, Rumplestiltskin will destroy, one by one, fifty-two of Dr. Starks’ loved ones—unless the good doctor agrees to kill himself. In a blistering race against time, Starks’ is at the mercy of a psychopath’s devious game of vengeance. He must find a way to stop the madman—before he himself is driven mad. . . .

Happy 53rd birthday, Doctor. Welcome to the first day of your death.

When a mysterious letter bearing these threatening words is delivered to Dr. Frederick Starks, his predictable life is thrown into chaos. Suddenly, the psychoanalyst is plunged into a horrific game designed by a man who calls himself Rumplestiltskin. The rules: in two weeks Starks must guess Rumplestiltskin's identity and the source of his fury. If he succeeds, he goes free. If he fails, one by one, Rumplestiltskin will destroy fifty-two of Dr. Starks' loved ones -- friends, relatives, children -- unless the good doctor agrees to kill himself.

You ruined my life. And now I fully intend to ruin yours.

Ignoring the threat is not an option. When one of his patients dies under the wheels of a subway train and a detective investigating the case is struck by a hit-and-run driver, Starks knows his tormentor means business. And then there are the messengers sent to guide Starks on his descent, from the seductive woman in a trench coat who calls herself Virgil to a lawyer named Merlin weaving a spell of havoc and lies. His bank account rifled, his credit ruined, and his reputation dragged through the mud, Starks must rouse himself from the cocoon of his life, unlock the secret of Rumplestiltskin, and find a way to stop the madman -- before he himself is driven mad.

One thing of which you can be absolutely certain: My anger knows no limits.

A mesmerizing thriller that gives a wicked new twist to the doctor-patient relationship, The Analyst's weaves a blistering race against time with a tale of identities shattered and chosen, disguises taken and discarded. With his trademark style, breathless plots, and brilliantly realized characters, John Katzenbach proves once again why both critics and fans alike have crowned him the master of suspense.

The Wrong Man: A Novel

Scott Freeman is a man of reason–a college professor grounded in the rational and practical. But he becomes uneasy after finding an anonymous love letter hidden in his daughter’s room: “No one could ever love you like I do. No one ever will. We will be together forever. One way or another.” But the reality of Ashley’s plight far exceeds Scott’s worst suspicions.

One drink too many had led Ashley, a beautiful, bright art student, into what she thought was just a fling with a blue-collar bad boy. But now, no amount of pleading or reasoning can discourage his phone calls, ardent e-mails, and constant, watchful gaze.

Michael O’Connell is but a malignant shadow of a man. His brash, handsome features conceal a black and empty soul. Control is his religion. Cunning and criminal skill are his stock-in-trade. Rage is his language.

The harder Ashley tries to break free, the deeper Michael burrows into every aspect of her life, so she turns in desperation to her divorced parents and her mother’s new partner–three people still locked in a coldly civilized triangle of resentment. But their fierce devotion to Ashley is the common bond that will draw them together to face down a predator.

For Ashley’s family, it is a test of primal love that will drive them to the extreme edge–and beyond–in a battle of wills that escalates into a life-or-death war to protect their own.

From the bestselling master of suspense, John Katzenbach, The Wrong Man is an elegantly crafted and breathtakingly intense read that asks the question, “How far would you go to save the child you love?”


From the Hardcover edition.

In the Heat of the Summer

The first novel by Carl Hiaasen's ace Miami Herald crime-reporter colleague John Katzenbach stars a reporter who stumbles onto the story of his life in Miami's mean season, July. (It was adapted as the Kurt Russell/Mariel Hemingway film The Mean Season.) Katzenbach's tale blazes with local color, and his depiction of the newspaper life is accurate, entertaining, and animated by an interesting dilemma: What does a newshound do when he becomes part of the story he's covering?

That's what happens to Malcolm Anderson of The Miami Journal. One day in 1975, fate hands him Page One material: a beautiful teenager found with the back of her head removed by a .45 bullet. Katzenbach takes us through the reporter's paces: eliciting quotes from the victim's family and friends (the girls at school wonder who'll replace the deceased on the cheerleading squad); getting great "art" for the photographer; negotiating the story's space, timing, and emphases with the city editor.

But this is no ordinary killing. The only thing worse than a dead teen is a dead teen with a note in her pocket reading, "Number One." Worse yet, Malcolm gets a call at his desk from the "Numbers Killer," who taunts him with an elliptical account of his tormented childhood and violent Vietnam experiences. As Malcolm desperately tries to deduce the killer's motives and prevent the next murder, he wrestles with the terrible question of his own complicity. The bad guy here is just OK, but the reporter is a very good character, and the novel well merits its Edgar Award nomination. --Tim Appelo

State of Mind

Susan Clayton, a professional puzzle maker, is stumped by this anonymous note left at her door: "THE FIRST PERSON POSSESSES THAT WHICH THE SECOND PERSON HID." Distracted by the sweltering Florida Keys evening and her cancer-stricken mother in the next room, Susan spends hours before she solves the riddle--it means "I have found you." Ominous words, considering that a serial killer is stalking Florida. And in this novel, Florida is ominous to begin with: it's set in a Robocop-like future society where people carry semiautomatics like breath mints, road rage reigns, and folks gladly trade their right to privacy for a place in a protected community called the Fifty-first State (Katzenbach's scary takeoff on Disney's planned town of Celebration, Florida). Meanwhile, Susan's brother Jeffrey, an authority on serial killers, is finishing up a lecture when his silent security alarm flashes. His metal-detecting alarm was set off by special agent Robert Martin of "State Security" (an American-style SS), who confronts the good professor with some bad news about his late father, a psychopath. Could he be the one who left Susan that threatening note? Can anybody stop the Fifty-first State from getting even scarier? With mounting suspense, Jeffrey, Susan, and their ailing mother put their heads together to keep the futuristic body count from getting wholly out of control. There is perhaps a touch less gore than Katzenbach fans may be used to, but no fewer thrills. He has seen the future, and it will make your hair stand on end. --Rebekah Warren

Twenty-five years ago, Jeffrey and Susan Clayton fled their tyrannical father--a man who was later suspected in the heinous murder of a young student. Though the father was never charged, he committed suicide. Or so it seemed. For someone has sent Susan a cryptic note. Once deciphered, it carries a terrifying message: I have found you.

Meanwhile, a serial killer has invaded a tightly controlled community. Is Jeffrey Clayton's father the source of this latest killing spree? The authorities think so--and they present Jeffrey, now a noted expert on serial killers, with a challenge: Find the butcher responsible for the newborn spate of carnage. Find your father. . . .

Hart's War

Stalag 17 meets the best of John Grisham in this tremendously exciting and moving new thriller, about a murder trial inside a German prisoner-of-war camp during World War II. John Katzenbach has taken elements of his own father's history in such a camp, added a racial twist (the defendant is a black pilot, a member of the legendary Tuskegee Airmen), and created a memorable adventure story that soars with hope and cries out to be filmed.

The first thing that former law student Tommy Hart does after his B-25 is shot down and he--the only survivor--is captured, is to fill out a form for the International Red Cross, telling his family he's alive and requesting, under "Special Items Needed," a copy of Edmund's Principles of Common Law. Amazingly, the book is waiting when he arrives at Stalag Luft Thirteen in the Bavarian woods. Hart soon puts it to good use, defending (with the help of two other prisoners, a former London barrister and a Canadian police detective) the prickly, proud Lieutenant Lincoln Scott when he is charged with killing a racist and corrupt fellow prisoner. The Nazis, especially a resident SS observer, have their own reasons for wanting the trial to be seen as a fair one, and it takes place against the backdrop of a planned mass escape.

Katzenbach deftly balances a dozen major characters with credible scenes of legal and extra-legal action. His previous thrillers, available in paperback, include Day of Reckoning, In the Heat of the Summer, Just Cause, The Shadow Man, State of Mind, and The Traveler. --Dick Adler

Second Lieutenant Tommy Hart, a navigator whose B-25 was shot out of the sky in 1942, is burdened with guilt as the only surviving member of his crew. Now he is just another POW at the fiercely guarded Stalag Luft 13 in Bavaria.

Then routine comes to a halt with the arrival of a new prisoner: First Lieutenant Lincoln Scott, an African American Tuskegee airman who instantly becomes the target of contempt from his fellow soldiers. When a prisoner is brutally murdered, and all the blood-soaked evidence points to Scott, Hart is tapped to defend the soldier. In a trial rife with racial tension and raw conflict, where the lines between ally and enemy blur, there are those with their own secret motives, and a burning passion for a rush to judgment, no matter what the cost.

Second Lieutenant Tommy Hart, a navigator whose B-25 was shot out of the sky in 1942, is burdened with guilt as the only surviving member of his crew. Now he is just another POW at the fiercely guarded Stalag Luft 13 in Bavaria.

Then routine comes to a halt with the arrival of a new prisoner: First Lieutenant Lincoln Scott, an African American Tuskegee airman who instantly becomes the target of contempt from his fellow soldiers. When a prisoner is brutally murdered, and all the blood-soaked evidence points to Scott, Hart is tapped to defend the soldier.

In a trial rife with racial tension and raw conflict, where the lines between ally and enemy blur, there are those with their own secret motives, and a burning passion for a rush to judgment, no matter what the cost.

"This is a wonderful novel. It deserves reading... The characters... leap off the pages."
   HOUSTON CHRONICLE

"Fascinating and powerful... as both a war novel and a legal thriller, Hart's War is a compelling read."
   SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER

"Scenes of considerable power... Katzenbach's best."
   PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER

Traveler

As a jaded detective at the Miami Police Department, Mercedes Barren isn't phased by much. That is, until a late-night phone call awakens her from one nightmare and catapults her into another: her niece has been murdered. Within days, Detective Barren has a surly Islamic fundamentalist in custody cutting a plea bargain--for a series of murders. As much as she would like to believe he murdered her niece, instinct tells her otherwise. Enter Douglas Jeffers, a disgruntled photojournalist who's seen one too many killers, courtrooms, and shredded cadavers. His mission? To commit a series of "copy cat" murders with a twist: he's forcing a young English major to document his journey. Barren catches on, Jeffers's brother (a psychiatrist who specializes in sexual offenders, of course) gets involved, and the motley cast races to a hypertension-inducing finish. Not recommended for those with delicate sensibilities, The Traveler casually throws out descriptions of mutilated organs and vicious assaults with the bored ease of a maître d'. Although it has a tendency to veer into melodrama, the caffeinated cadence and memorable one-liners make for a respectable beach read: "Killers were the Kleenex of the drug industry; they were used a few times and then discarded unceremoniously." --Rebekah Warren

A man, a woman, a car, and a camera on a sentimental journey through the past. He kills, he photographs, she writes about it -- or she dies, too. Detective Mercedes Barren has a reason to give chase: her niece was a victim. So does psychiatrist Martin Jeffers, a specialist in sex offenders and a more than passing acquaintance of the killer.

La historia del loco

Day of Reckoning

Megan and Duncan Richards have it all: beautiful kids, a lovely home, respectable jobs in banking and real estate, stock portfolios, and a .45 pistol dating back to 1968. They don't talk about the .45, because back then they were members of the Students for a Democratic Society splinter group the Phoenix Brigade. Their charismatic, manipulative leader, Olivia, bullied and shamed them into driving the getaway cars in a bank robbery to raise cash for the revolution. Olivia--then known as Tanya--made the bank job sound completely foolproof, inevitable, like the withering away of the state in a Marxist fantasy.

But cops and robbers died in the bungled heist (grippingly described by Katzenbach, a former SDS kid and distinguished crime reporter turned novelist), and Megan and Duncan fled the scene. Olivia emerges from 18 years in jail and hooks up with a Phoenix Brigade pal who's been an underground refugee. Age has failed to mellow her: they kidnap the Richards' son and Duncan's dad--a judge-and Olivia has had time to dream up a much meaner, cleverer plan to raise cash and wreak vengeance. She never squealed on the couple, enabling her to blackmail them--they're still accomplices to murder, so they can't call the cops on her. Will Duncan pull off a truly sophisticated bank job to save his kids? Can Olivia keep her unstable gang in line? Can realtor Megan find Olivia's hideout? As events rampage along, Katzenbach puts us inside each character's head, drawing closed the net of terror. This is a stay-up-all-night thriller. --Tim Appelo

Megan and Duncan Richards have come a long way from 1968 and their radical past. He's a banker; she's in real estate. They have two teenage daughters and a young son. But the past has not forgotten them. From her prison cell, the beautiful and cold-blooded terrorist Tanya, with whom the Richards were involved in 1968, plots her revenge on the couple she blames for her capture. Soon she will be released from jail. Then she will start to pay them back -- beginning with their son . . .

The Shadow Man

Simon Winter was once one of the best cops on the Miami homicide beat, but now he's just another retired guy with no relatives. He sticks his trusty gun in his mouth--and just as he's about to squeeze the trigger, his neighbor Sophie Millstein pounds on his door.

Sophie, a Holocaust survivor, says she's just caught sight of Der Schattenmann (the Shadow Man), who hunted down the Jews of Berlin. He was a "catcher," a Jewish man who worked for the Gestapo. Once you glimpsed the Shadow Man, nobody ever saw you again. But Sophie just saw him, she's sure of it, right here in Miami!

Simon doubts it, but when Sophie is murdered, he doesn't believe that Leroy "Hightops" Jefferson, the crack addict seen sprinting out of her apartment with her jewelry, did the deed. Why was Sophie's cat strangled? And when another Holocaust survivor dies, why does his suicide note omit one letter of his wife's name? Did he write it at gunpoint? Simon and young sleuths Walter Robinson and Espy Martinez hunt the Shadow Man, and even Leroy winds up showing a streak of heroism.

Besides a clever premise, Katzenbach--a Miami Herald veteran--packs a lot of vivid local color into his Edgar-nominated mystery about a town where drug killings are so common the cops call them "felony littering." But the characters are simplistic and the narrative pace sluggish by comparison with Katzenbach's World War II POW murder mystery, Hart's War. --Tim Appelo

When it comes to intricate, fast-paced excitement and edge-of-your-seat suspense, John Katzenbach is a master of the game. Now Katzenbach has created another shocking page-turner, and a villain as monstrous as evil itself: The Shadow Man.

Berlin, 1943. Few saw his face; none knew his name. In whispered circles he was known only as Der Schattenmann, a merciless "catcher" for the Nazis. He was there in the darkness when they came for you, and he would be there, smiling, when the trains took you away in the morning gloom to Auschwitz....

Miami Beach, present day. Retired homicide detective Simon Winter is living out his golden years in dejected solitude. But his life takes an urgent turn when his neighbor, Sophie Millstein, appears at his door trembling in fear. She has seen a ghost...a demon from her past, Der Schattenmann. But he isn't just a nightmare--he's real--and his icy stare cuts through her like a razor. The next morning, Sophie is found strangled, her eyes locked open in terror.

The police think it's just another homicide. But Winter knows the horrifying truth: an elusive, anonymous killer is stalking Holocaust survivors in Miami, silently creeping through the hot city. Now, after years of retirement, Winter once again hits the streets. And together with Walter Robinson, a committed black detective, and Espy Martinez, a sharp, driven Latino prosecutor, he will match wits with a sadistically smooth expert on death who lives for the thrill of the hunt, tortures for the rush of power, and murders to keep himself, and his history, hidden forever....

Riveting in its suspense, chilling in its evocation of the evil of times past, unforgettable in its characters and settings, The Shadow Man will hold you enthralled from first sentence to last.

AN ALTERNATE SELECTION OF THE BOOK-OF-THE-MONTH