Moving back to Seattle to escape the emotional burden of his work for the FBI's Violent Crimes section, retired FBI agent Frank Black discovers that his talent for ""seeing what the killer sees"" comes in handy when a serial killer begins to stalk the city. Original. TV tie-in."
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About the Author
Elizabeth Hand is the award-winning author of six novels, including Black Light and Waking the Moon, and one short story collection, Last Summer at Mars Hill.
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More About the Author
A couple of years after seeing Patti Smith perform, Elizabeth Hand flunked out of college and became involved in the nascent punk scenes in DC and NYC. From 1979 to 1986 she worked at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air & Space Museum; she was eventually readmitted to university to study cultural anthropology, and received her B.A. She is the author of many novels, including Winterlong, Waking the Moon (Tiptree and Mythopoeic Award-Winner), Glimmering, and Mortal Love, and three collections of stories, including the recent Saffron and Brimstone. Her fiction has received the Nebula, World Fantasy, Mythopeoic, Tiptree, and International Horror Guild Awards, and her novels have been chose as New York Times and Washington Post Notable Books. She has also been awarded a Maine Arts Commission Fellowship. A regular contributor to the Washington Post Book World and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Hand lives with her family on the Maine Coast.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Facinating, and a hard to put down book.,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Frenchman (Millennium) (Mass Market Paperback)
I found the Frenchman a facinating and heart stopping book that I couldn't put down. After renting it in the Library, I went out and bought a copy for myself to keep for years to come. Now I can read it over and over again whenever I want.
3.0 out of 5 stars
"a face stared out at him, its eyes. . .occluded with decay, matted blond hair shrouding its livid cheeks.",
By Mark Louis Baumgart (Michigan, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Frenchman (Millennium) (Mass Market Paperback)
"Millennium" was an American tv series that was created by "X-Files" creator and scribe Chris Carter, and starred Lance Hendrickson for three years, 1996-1998, in which he played the moody, introverted, and psychic Frank Black. Black was a sexual criminal profiler, and now he's moved back to Seattle after ten years in Washington, D.C., and after recovering from a breakdown. After he has moved into his new house with his wife Catherine (Megan Gallagher) and child Jordon (Brittany Tiplady) he notices a headline in the morning paper in which exotic dancer Calamity, who worked at the Ruby Tip, is brutally murdered in her own home. At heart, Black is an investigator, and something about this story catches his attention, and so he goes down to the police station to see if he can find out anything about the murder. Here he finds that his old friend Lt. Bob Bletcher (Bill Smitrovich) is the head of the murder investigation. Black talks Bletcher into letting him help on the case as Black once worked for the FBI, something which will cause friction amongst the other investigators. As he investigates he learns that Calamity had a private session with "The Frenchman", an oddball amongst other oddballs, who mumbles poetry and constantly holds up signs to the women that seem to be written in French. Black also finds out that despite their not supposing to, the Ruby Tip actually has monitors in the booths, and that they now have a hazy video of The Frenchman. Then there is a murder of a gay man, and the two murders seem connected, and Black's investigations will lead to a country hillside where gay men cruise to hook-up with others. Here he finds the killer, there is a pursuit, the killer escapes, but the incident inadvertently leads him to another victim. It is through the finding of this victim that a pattern will start to form that will lead to the capture of the killer. This is a novelization of the pilot episode, and the book is printed on thick paper, wide margins, short chapters and paragraphs, lots of white space and empty pages, and a THIRTY-FIVE excerpt from the next book in the series, giving the impression that there is more here than initially seems. Therefore Elizabeth Hand's novelization really doesn't go into much depth in virtually anything, except for Frank Black, we really never get ANY detail on how anybody else looks; nor is there any detail on how the police investigate the murders. Black comes across as a rogue investigator whose techniques would get any case thrown out of court, and, despite psychically seeing some of the killer's delusions (which are done better on video) he remains a cipher as well. Thus this book is a good artifact of a show that is rarely seen here in America in syndication anymore, and Hand does a credible job as well, as this novelization is light years better than her awful The X-Files: Fight the Future novelization. However as a literary speculative fiction writer, she probably considered this novelization a step down. This novelization also saw series regulars Lt. Bob Giebelhouse (Stephen J. Lang) and Jack Meredith (Don MacKay) first make an appearance, although Peter Watts (Terry O'Quinn) makes an appearance in the tv episode, he and the Millennium Group don't appear in Hand's novel. Although lasting three years, each season was completely different than the others. Frank Black went from chasing criminals with the help of the Millennium Group, to being chased BY them. The series also suffered from a continuing change of supporting characters, and creative personal. It didn't help that at the same time, there was another American series called "The Profiler" starring Ally Walker as Dr. Samantha Waters, which was a character who was also a psychic criminal profiler. Both also had pretty rocky storylines, but both hunted extreme sexual serial killers, both had protagonists that were psychic, both fell apart at about the same time, and both only lasted about three years. Three stars for a good competent job, but Hand really doesn't do more than that, and adds nothing to episode itself. For this site I have also done these other novelizations: "Barb Wire": Novelisation by Neal Barrett, Jr. The Frighteners: A Novel by Michael Jahn Hitman: Enemy Within by William C. Dietz Mutant Chronicles by Matt Forbeck Plasmid by Robert Knight (a.k.a.: Christopher Evans)
3.0 out of 5 stars
The end draws near...,
By
This review is from: The Frenchman (Millennium) (Mass Market Paperback)
Or does it? Flush with the success of his show The X-Files, creator/producer Chris Carter branched out into what seemed to be darker territory with Millennium. Rather than focusing on the paranormal (i.e. UFOs, aliens, and assorted monsters of the week) the new series introduced Frank Black, a man haunted by his ability to literally get into the minds of the serial killers he hunts, and the Millenium Group, a "consulting" outfit that also seems to function as some kind of secret society. The monsters of the week were from next door instead of outer space and the tension came from spooky fears of the approaching millenial change rather than government conspiracy and/or cover-up. The show seemed to have potential, but it never really grasped and explored its good vs. evil structure - despite taking some interesting turns in the second season. Plot turns that Carter ignored when control of the series returned to him during season three.
The Frenchman is a novelization of the premiere episode and, for what it is, it does a professional job of getting the feel of the show down. The reader will not come away from it with any greater insight into Frank Black, his family, or his new consulting job. Everything is pretty vague - it is all set-up for later episodes to build and expand upon. A deranged man is abducting, torturing and then murdering exotic dancers as well as gay men out looking for some companionship. Criminal profiler Frank Black, having recovered from a paranoid breakdown, has returned with his wife and daughter to their hometown of Seattle and taken a consulting job with the Millennium Group - an organization that appears to help state and county police hunt down localized serial killers. Black is quick to help an old friend hunt this most recent threat to Seattle. And that is about it. Lots of style, but very little substance to go with it. Then again, it is an attempt to turn a simple hour of television into a full length novel. With that in mind, it isn't bad for a rainy Saturday afternoon's reading time.
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