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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A worthy follow-up, September 7, 2006
Warren Ritter--fugitive, Tarot card reader, ex-revolutionary, millionaire--is in hot water up to his neck again in Skibbins' follow-up to the excellent Eight of Swords, which won the Malice Domestic/St. Martin's award in 2004. A Satanist is asking him to look into a series of serial killings, which seem somehow to be tied to Warren's Weather Underground activities of the 1960s. And if that weren't bad enough, the Satanist's sister is a woman from Warren's past, determined to make trouble in Warren's present.
Having committed to seeing his problems through in the first book (Warren has a history of running for the hills), he can't abandon his love Sally and the teenager she "adopted" earlier in the series. So even when Warren sees a pattern to the killings, even when Sally is mad enough at him to cut him off entirely, and even when he's considered a suspect in the crimes, Warren doggedly battles his manic depression and his past to see the investigation to its conclusion.
As in the first book in the series, Skibbins juggles the wild contradictions of Warren's personality well, creating a three-dimensional character whom readers will want to know better and better as the series continues. And Warren continues to grow as a person in this book, as the author is not content to put his characters through the same paces again and again.
The dialogue is quick and intelligent, the plot turns come just when you want them and the characters are real, living people you can care about. Warren Ritter is a unique creation in mystery fiction, and hopefully, this book will introduce him to a wider audience. He and his creator deserve it.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Complex and compelling, May 11, 2006
HIGH PRIESTESS is the second in a series of novels by David Skibbins, a tale of murder and madness that stretches back over decades into the tumultuous 1960s. Warren Ritter, the protagonist of this intriguing piece, is hardly a likable character, even if one wholeheartedly embraces his politics of destruction. He professes to love chaos but complains about the random wind that disturbs the tarot reading business he so dearly loves to call his own. He never misses an opportunity to gripe about the system in general and the American Dream in particular, but has plenty of free time to wallow in self-pity (and to indulge in his foodie predilections) due to having fortuitously invested in Microsoft. As Skibbins himself notes in a responsible afterword in HIGH PRIESTESS, Ritter is an eccentric and unstable man.
So with all of this baggage, why is there so much to recommend in HIGH PRIESTESS? The answer, in a word, is Skibbins. He has created a controversial character who is not going to be universally loved, or even liked, but nonetheless has built a compelling, readable world around him. That world is Berkeley, California and the surrounding environs. Skibbins is not merely passing through here. He knows this world down to its last nuance, and even if one is not enamored with the thought of a city being populated by a gang of arrested personalities, Skibbins will have you yearning to visit this place at least once in order to walk through Ritter's world.
Ritter, a radical on the run, is quietly reading tarot fortunes on the weekend and keeping to the cracks on the sidewalk when the shoe of the past abruptly collides with the nose of the present. The shoe, in this case, is Ed Hightower, an old acquaintance of Ritter's who has another identity himself --- that of the leader of a Church of Satan. Someone has been killing off their members, and since the police haven't been much help, Hightower would like Ritter to conduct an unofficial investigation of his own. Ritter wants no part of it, but Hightower knows who he really is, and besides, Hightower has a twin sister, Veronique. Ritter and Veronique have a history that goes back to the 1960s and ties directly into the secret that Ritter has been carrying like dark and dirty baggage for decades. The fact that they were lovers has something to do not only with Ritter's reluctance but also his eventual acquiescence with respect to investigating the matter. That Ritter is already emotionally involved with another doesn't help matters either.
Nonetheless Ritter, with some cyber-sleuthing help, quickly identifies three potential suspects, all of whom have sharp axes to grind with the church and the personality to carry it out. Ritter, however, suddenly finds himself in the crosshairs when he is unexpectedly framed for a new murder. His only hope is to quickly identify the real killer and acquire damning evidence against him. But how will he do this when he's on the run, hunted not only for what he didn't do in the present, but also for his involvement in the sins of his past?
In addition to being a compelling storyteller Skibbins can craft a heck of a mystery story. There is also, interestingly enough, a rough and surprisingly fitting justice meted out at the conclusion of the book, and on more than one front. While Ritter may not be your favorite detective, it's difficult not to wish him well by book's end. HIGH PRIESTESS is a complex, compelling and, most importantly, well-written work.
--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Enjoyable mystery with an interesting look at the Weather Underground, August 21, 2006
Warren Ritter (formerly Richard) has been on the run since escaping an explosion and leaving the Weather Underground. He's gradually creating a life for himself as a tarot card reader in Berkley, California, but his past catches up with him when Edward, brother of Warren's Weatherman girlfriend, Veronique, and now head of the local Church of Satan, catches up with him. Edward is frightened. Someone is murdering the leaders of his church--and he wants Warren, who recently solved another murder, to help. Saying no isn't easy--both because Edward has the power to destroy Warren's carefully constructed life and because Warren still has feelings for Veronique.
With the help of his computer-hacker girlfriend, Warren develops a suspect list. A minister at a fundamentalist church, the owner of a shop specializing in Angel merchandise, and a Japanese student who happens to be related to senior leaders of the Japanese Mafia. None of these women are easy to go after, but when someone shoots at Veronique while she and Warren are coming from dinner, he knows he's got to solve the case--even if his girlfriend ditches him.
When he's not working on the case, Warren deals with his own issues--manic-depressive disease, the recent discovery that he's not only a father, he's a grandfather, and his continued guilt for his involvement with the Weather Underground--and the abrupt end to that involvement.
Author David Skibbins does a great job with the character of Warren Ritter. He's interesting, conflicted, and complex. His writing is solid and workmanlike, keeping the reader involved in the story and trying to untangle the clues. Skibbins's use of tarot cards to foreshadow the plot is an effective technique. HIGH PRIESTESS is definitely worth the read--and I'll keep my eyes open for more mysteries by Skibbins.
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