Lady Killer

by Lawrence Light and Meredith Anthony

Despite its imperfections, this New York City crime story is fun to read. It’s one of those thrillers which can keep you turning pages through a long sleepless night.

You’ll have to ignore being manipulated by authors who use pseudo-psychology to put puppet characters through their paces, but in exchange you’ll get the excitement of blood, gore, and serial murder on the sleazy streets of Manhattan at night. You might find the characters, the motivations and the romance less than realistic, but you’ll get to try to figure out for yourself what the four female victims of the Ladykiller have in common, why they all were shot through the right eye, and what it all has to do with the West Side Crisis Center. You’ll get to meet Detective Dave Dillon of the special NYCPD task force whose investigation is going nowhere. You’ll get to wonder about his haunted past and the present pressure to perform. You’ll get to vicariously experience potentially hot romance as gorgeous Crisis Center social worker, Megan Morrison, distracts the all too willing detective. You’ll get to wonder how Reuben Silver, another counselor at the crisis center, and scumbag, Ace Cronen, are cunningly involved. Then you’ll have to decide if you can believe what you just read. You’ll ponder and be suspicious of the hostility and jealousy of Megan’s supervisor, Nita. You’ll speculate about what the ineffectual boss of the Crisis Center has to do with anything. You’ll get another helping of vicarious sexual yearning through the female cop, Jamie .You’ll question why the killer's identity is revealed so early and then you’ll get to be slammed with the unbelievable last-minute twist. Ladykiller, a debut offering from a husband and wife team experienced in other genres, offers passion, titillation, perversion, violence, manipulation, a catchy title, dark alleys, and fearful thoughts. If you can accept a slick presentation which doesn’t quite hold together on deeper levels, you may be perfectly ecstatic with this one-night-stand thriller.