Customer Reviews

Ghostkiller

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

We first meet the Ghostkiller and Harry Palladin under an oil tank in Baltimore. After enduring a spree of rapes, mutilations and killings, Palladin has managed to track down the Ghostkiller. The police detective has no intention of letting the killer survive. After shooting him and burning him to a crisp Harry follows the Ghostkiller to the hospital and makes doubly (tripley?) sure of the death.

But something goes haywire. Nancy Greenbaum, who lay in shock in the next hospital cubical, suddenly comes back to life, but not as Nancy. The Ghostkiller is shocked to find itself returned as a female, but it is determined to survive. Even as Harry leaves the hospital believing he has won, the demented killer begins to plot again. To make matters more complicated, Nancy's spirit, suddenly thrust from its own body, now finds itself no longer an attractive married psychologist, but embodied as Nell, an 11 year old black girl.

The plot proceeds as expected. Harry's killing of the original Ghostkiller comes under question when the murders start again... The corkscrew complexity of this horror tale mounts, as hot dog sellers, drug dealers and the Internal Affairs department get involved. Sailing serenely through this crazy quilt is a stoned killer who needs to feed to survive.

This book shouldn't work. The plot is hardly new. The characters are uniformly flaky (the sanest being the possessed 11 year old). And the monster is a bit too strong, fast, and brilliant. But somehow it does. It turns out to be pleasantly readable, although it is certainly not great art. Perhaps the inadvertent comedy of a seriously overweight police detective chasing a monster aided by a young girl and several juvenile delinquents makes it more than the author originally intended. Or perhaps it is simply so bad it transcends itself. Regardless of why I found myself enjoying it much more than was justifiable. So I am reluctant to recommend it, but if you do buy it you will probably enjoy it. In spite of yourself.

I'm not a horror reader. I don't usually care much for books that include cannibalism, dismemberment, supernatural phenomena AND lesbian sex all in one gamey brew.

Unless they're as well-written as "Ghostkiller."

Unless they're stuffed full of characters like Police Dept. Psychologist Bernie Wump, who wears alligators on his sweaters and tries to help street-hardened cops deal with their inner children. Or hip young rapper-wannabe MC Dee-licious, whose real name is Ethel and whose Reform Jewish parents can't figure her out.

Not to mention Harry Paladin, an overweight, oversmart cop with a nuclear-powered... detector and a real desire to see things get done right-- a distinct handicap in a civil servant.

Yes, the plot is trite--supernatural entity, serial killer, stupid-authorities-won't-believe-the-truth, and all. But the story races from action sequence to action sequence fast enough to keep the reader breathless in spite of it.

The author slyly sends up everything from group therapy to gangbangers, while keeping the chills coming on every page. It's a fast read--and a good thing, too, because I needed to pry my clutching fingers loose and take a deep breath before I passed out from holding it.

The description of this book doesn't exactly match the real content because it only tells us something about Nancy Greenbaum or better, Nancy Greenbaums body.

The Ghostkiller died after suffering from terrible burns. Simultaniously, just on the other side of a curtain, doctors are fighting for the life of Nancy Greenbaum, suffering from a brain trauma. The Ghostkiller dies and while the real Nancy's too weak to fight against an intruder in her body, the Ghostkiller takes her body and Nancy`s soul is pushed out of it. Like a ghost, floating above the events, she witnesses the events and sees her own body opening her eyes. Like a ghost she follows her former body to witness terrible murder when she is suddenly dragged into the body of a dying 14 years old teenager. Her soul in a new body she begins her fight against something older then she could ever imagine.
Finally she's able to get in contact with the detective which was responsible for the death of the Ghostkillers former host.

***

The Ghost Killer's a well written horror-suspense-mystery mix with a lot of peaks and twists. I really enjoyed the run against time.
In 1998 there was a movie with Denzel Washington named "Fallen" and these two stories are quite similar. I really was surprised to learn that the book was written three years later. At least the reader gets the impression the movie was based on this book. I knew the movie and that took quite a lot of my usually fun in reading good stories.
However, the book as itself is worth a read as long as you aren't familiar with the movie as I am. It still has different incidents and characters and of course a somewhat different ending.

Here is a book with twists and turns on every page; kept me wanting to read more and more. I enjoyed "Ghostkiller".

this was actually a very good book for having the same old boring story line of there being one man left and no one believes
him cause of his looks and ways, i really liked it though