Mad Man's Tale [Hardcover]

John Katzenbach (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 2004

When the body of a young female trainee is found horribly murdered in the Nurses' station of the Western State Mental Hospital, Massachusetts, there is apparently no shortage of suspects - a whole hospital of them. One inmate claims to have seen the killer who he will only describe as The Angel. Twenty years later, Francis Petrel, once a patient at the hospital, writes his account of the events of the murder and its investigation on the walls of his tiny apartment. As he writes he is visited by hallucinations, by the increasing anxiety at his loosening grip on reality. As he goes deeper and deeper into his story about those events, he plunges further into the return of his own madness. He remembers how he is co-opted into the investigation by Lucy Jones, a driven young profiler who has her own reasons for pursuing this particular killer. But she, and Francis, face the same conundrum: how does one find a cold blooded killer masquerading as mad in a world populated by the deranged? In the end it will come down to Francis - he is the only one of the investigating team capable of recognizing the essential lie that The Angel embodies.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The conceit of this impossible-to-put-down thriller—the story of the hunt for a serial killer-rapist who has concealed himself among a psychiatric asylum's insane—is that it was written in pencil by a madman on the walls of his apartment. More than 20 years ago, Francis Xavier Petrel, nicknamed C-Bird for the seabird his name evokes, was confined against his will in the Western State Hospital, a run-down residential mental health facility that rivals Kesey's Cuckoo's Nest for evil administrators and whacked-out inmates. A shy, frightened 21-year-old who endures a cacophony of disembodied voices, C-Bird is befriended by Peter the Fireman, nicknamed for the church he burned down with a pedophile priest still inside. (C-Bird and Peter appear almost normal amid the hospital's other catatonics, manic-depressives, psychopaths and psychotics.) Then they discover the raped and mutilated body of nurse Short Blond (nicknamed for her hair) stuffed into a storage closet. All evidence points to paranoid-schizophrenic inmate Lanky, who earlier in the day had identified Short Blond as an agent of evil, but Lanky claims the killing was the work of an invisible Angel of Death who committed the crime to save them from some unspecified devilish fate. C-Bird and Peter, knowing that Lanky has been unjustly accused, set out to find the real killer. They are joined by state prosecutor Lucy Kyoto Jones, who believes the killer is the same man who has committed other savage crimes beyond the walls of the hospital. Katzenbach (author of the bestsellers Just Cause and The Analyst) delivers an uplifting story of justice, friendship, mystery and, above all, the courage of certain men and women who rise up, no matter the circumstances, to defeat evil, no matter the consequences.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

The narrator isn't exactly a madman but, rather, someone whose madness is quieted by meds. "It is a very hard thing, in this time of ours, to be mad and middle-aged," hero Francis Petrel writes early on. Perhaps the best feature of veteran crime writer Katzenbach's latest is the way he fleshes out the everyday desperation of someone living on the fringes of society. Petrel receives an invitation to a reunion of former "guests" of the insane asylum his parents consigned him to as a teenager. This not very credible plot starter leads Petrel to investigate what horrors led to the hospital's closing, his thoughts especially revolving around the unsolved murder of a nurse. Intriguing, but far too long and too encumbered with Petrel's Byzantine thoughts to generate suspense. Still, the Edgar-nominated Katzenbach has a following, and this introspective tale will interest those who don't read thrillers for the thrills. Connie Fletcher
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 480 pages
• Publisher: Bantam Press; Stated First Edition edition (June 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0593052056
• ISBN-13: 978-0593052051
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (54 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,110,356 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Katzenbach at his best, July 10, 2004

By 

Eileen Rieback (Coral Springs, FL USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Madman's Tale: A Novel (Katzenbach, John) (Hardcover)

In "The Madman's Tale," John Katzenbach has produced a well-written thriller with an unusual protagonist and an eerie setting. Francis "C-Bird" Petrel is a former patient of a state mental hospital who recounts a series of unsolved murders that occurred at the asylum years ago. The narrative weaves together the present and past as Francis revisits the closed-down asylum for a series of lectures and then grapples with the memories and internal voices of his past. He decides to write down, in pencil on the walls of his apartment, the story of life in the asylum and his role in helping track down the serial killer known simply as "The Angel." As Francis composes his tale, his madness threatens to resurface and prevent him from completing the story.

After being committed to the hospital at the age of 21 following a violent outburst against his family, Francis struggled to adjust to institutional life. He was befriended by Peter the Fireman, a former arson investigator under psychiatric evaluation for setting fire to a church. Fellow inmate Lanky announced that an angel visited him and commanded him to stamp out evil. Lanky was found with the blood of a slain nurse on his clothing and was accused of the murder. Prosecuting attorney Lucy Jones visited the hospital because of similarities between this murder and those against other women that had previously occurred outside the confines of the hospital. She felt that Lanky was wrongly accused and that the murder was the work of a serial killer now hiding out in the asylum. She called upon Francis and Peter to help her track down the killer among the institution inmates.

Lucy and her helpers soon discovered that finding a murderer in a mental institution was no easy matter. The usual investigative techniques did not work. How can they find a psychopath among thousands of psychotics and other mentally ill patients? What is considered suspicious behavior in a place where the abnormal is normal and where the illogical is routine? Are they looking for signs of sanity or insanity in a suspect? How can they interview witnesses or suspects without setting off a disruption of the institutional routine that could upset the inmates?

Katzenbach provides a powerful portrayal of the despair and hopelessness of asylum life through an array of disillusioned inmates and bureaucratic medical staff. He includes touching portraits of a would-be Napoleon and a would-be Cleopatra who befriend Francis. Through schizophrenics, catatonics, psychotics, and the delusional, he portrays inmates who rely on medications to keep mental demons at bay and who often lose the battle to regain sanity and reentry into the outside world. With echoes of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," this book is a fascinating, eerie, and suspenseful must-read.

Eileen Rieback

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "All my life, all I wanted was to be normal.", June 24, 2004

By 

Mary Whipple (New England) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Madman's Tale: A Novel (Katzenbach, John) (Hardcover)

A most unusual "detective story," The Madman's Tale spools out from the memory of Francis X. Petrel, a delusional man in his 40s who is former mental patient. Known at the hospital to which he was once committed as "C-Bird," because of his last name, Francis reconnects, twenty years after his release, with Napoleon, another former patient at the hospital, who urges him to write about the murders that happened when they were both confined. Francis is not sure he can write about these events. "The trouble with being mad," he says, "was that it was real hard to tell what was true and what wasn't." Nevertheless, when he returns home, he discovers that the visit has "startled emotions within [him]." Lacking paper, he picks up his pencil and begins to cover the walls of his apartment with the story that becomes this novel.

Author Katzenbach is convincing in his portrayal of Francis, both as the barely functioning 41-year-old narrator who still hears voices and sees visions, and as a 21-year-old patient, who, though mad, is not nearly as mad as many others in the hospital. When a nurse nicknamed Short Blond, is gruesomely murdered shortly after Francis arrives, a young prosecutor from Boston, Lucy Kyoto Jones, who was, herself, once the victim of a vicious crime, arrives at the hospital to investigate. Since she has no staff with her, she asks for help, and C-Bird's only friend, another inmate named Fireman, volunteers, believing his skills as an arson investigator could be useful. Francis also agrees to help. Soon two more murders occur.

Katzenbach brings the chaos of the hospital to life, creating a powerful and affecting portrait of the lives of the mentally ill, and taking us inside the mind of Francis at two different stages of his life, twenty years apart. As Francis continues writing his story on the walls of his apartment, the reader hopes desperately that Francis will finish the story before the terrifying, satanic Angel he sees and the cacophony of voices he hears capture him and destroy him completely. Because the plot is often unrealistic, the well-drawn main characters take center stage. The sense of foreboding and palpable evil are strong, and Katzenbach's vibrant dialogue, eye for detail, ability to describe strange interactions within the hospital, and his unusual main character turn the traditional detective story on its head. This is a real page-turner. (4.5 stars) Mary Whipple

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Brilliant, Ambitious Suspense Thriller - Beautifully & Sensitively Written, July 16, 2005

By 

Jana L. Perskie "ceruleana" (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Madman's Tale: A Novel (Mass Market Paperback)

When the Committee to Preserve the Western State Hospital invites former inmates, (those who are functional, not interned elsewhere, and still alive), to attend a special daylong program about the institute, its history, and the "important role it played in the state's current approach to treatment of the mentally ill," Francis "C-Bird" Petrel decides to visit his old residence, which was closed down twenty years before. It seems the committee wants to use a section of the grounds for a museum, and is sponsoring this function to raise funds. Francis has never been to a reunion of any kind in his entire life, and certainly never thought to return to this particular hospital, where so many traumatic and painful events occurred. Unsettled, but fascinated, he calls to confirm his attendance before he can change his mind.

On a warm May afternoon, wearing his only suit, Francis, now forty-one years-old, takes three buses before arriving at the small New England town where he had spent so much time behind walls and locked doors. Ghosts from the past haunt him as he recalls "the tastes and smells of madness." He listens to his past "as it swirled around him." The medications he takes daily keep the voices at bay, inner voices he has heard since he was a little boy. Of course, the meds have side effects, some severe, which cause other medical conditions - but the voices are quiet now...and that's the point. Francis is not completely convinced, however, that their silence is a good thing. They never told him to do anything bad, and he doesn't know if he would have obeyed them if they did. In a sad strange way, they offered him sensible advice and kept him company. He never experienced the normalcy of childhood, of growing up with friends, playing sports, dating, because of their presence. Except for the voices, he has always been isolated - alone. But he did make a friend or two at one time - at the hospital. And he reunites with one today.

Nappy, who obviously believed he was Napoleon, (most of the time), knows more about the former Emperor of the French than most historians. Another Western State Hospital alumni, he is going to give a speech about the "road to recovery" in today's program, and is glad to see C-Bird. Of course, he is now aware, all of the time, that he is neither emperor nor general. With chagrin, he admits to the huge number of delusional people who make the same claim to fame as he did. He was not even original in his madness. He confidentially informs "C-Bird" (the nickname that was given to Francis shortly after he was committed), that he will not discuss the killings in his speech - the killings which were never revealed, never solved, and that still give both men hideous nightmares. Then Nappy remarks, "I'll be happy when they tear it down. It was a dangerous evil place." And he asks C-Bird, almost pleadingly, to tell the story.

Francis goes home that evening thinking about Nappy's request. He has pens and pencils, but no paper. He does have unadorned, white painted walls. So he pulls an old chair over to the side of a wall, "deep in the corner of the room." His long suppressed memories have begun to surface, and he grips the pencil and begins to write.

Twenty years ago, a shy, frightened Francis Xavier Petrel arrived at Western State Hospital, in Massachusetts, in the back of an ambulance. He is a schizophrenic who has been guided by voices since childhood. Considered harmless, one day during a family argument, he threatened his parents and sisters with a kitchen knife. This outburst caused his family to commit him to the mental institution, where he is forced to adjust to terrifying and dangerous new surroundings. It is at Western State that he meets the first friend he has ever had - ironically, a man who is most definitely not insane. "Peter the Fireman," is a Boston firefighter and arson investigator, who burned down a Catholic church, inadvertently killing a priest and injuring several other people. He believed the church was empty. The priest was a pedophile who preyed on Peter's nephew, and many other innocent boys. The firefighter knew the priest would never be brought to justice, so he took the law into his own hands. He is at Western State for evaluation before standing trial.

When C-Bird and Peter find the broken and bloody corpse of a beautiful young nurse-trainee in a suspiciously unlocked storage closet, the hospital's medical director Dr. Gulptilil, and his assistant, the arrogant psychologist, Dr. Evans, are eager to place the blame on the most obvious inmate. Lanky, a paranoid schizophrenic, obsessed with finding and eliminating evil, had recently expressed hostility toward the young woman, but he is not a likely suspect, given the circumstances. However, he is arrested immediately, charged, and incarcerated in yet another institution. As Peter observes, "Evil has not been killed. It is right here among us and is as alive as you or I." Both Doctors Gulptilil and Evans do not want to explain their policies nor have their decisions scrutinized. They fear that further police and state investigation will bring out information about the brutal, substandard manner in which the hospital is being run, which would jeopardize their jobs.

Massachusetts profiler and state prosecuting attorney, Lucy Kyoto Jones, recognizes clues from the crime scene photographs which makes her think she has a serial killer-rapist on her hands - one she is very familiar with. There have been murders in three different parts of the state, with the exact same modus operandi. Not only does Ms. Jones believe Lanky is innocent of the crime, she is almost positive that this repeat killer has managed to conceal himself as a patient in the asylum. The man probably is considered harmless enough, especially medicated and sedated, that he is allowed occasional access to the outside world - perhaps furloughs to spend weekends with family. Lucy remembers Peter from former cases. He has testified frequently for the prosecution against suspected arsonists. He asks to help her investigate, and has the skills she requires. She respects him, regardless of the circumstances in which she find him, and accepts. They just have to find a way to bamboozle Dr. Gulptilil and Dr. Evans into cooperating.

Peter also wants to work with C-Bird, to the young man's great surprise. No one has ever wanted to do anything with him before, or be around him at all. The question for Lucy and Peter is, how does one find a psychopathic serial killer masquerading as a madman in a world populated by the insane? Peter recognizes that Francis is able to understand the inverted rationale of an insane asylum, and see into the minds of the mentally ill. In this world of madness, he is a better profiler than either Lucy or Peter.

As his need to concentrate and write with accuracy become stronger, Francis goes off his medications and begins hearing voices again, and hallucinating about the murderer the patients called "the Angel." The well-written, fast-paced, unputdownable narrative moves back and forth between life and events at Western State Hospital, twenty years before, in 1979, to the present, with Francis dedicating all his energies to documenting the story, at last. By bringing the truth to light, he hopes to resolve and put to rest the memories and fears which still stalk him.

I have the highest praise for Mr. Katzenbach's novel. He has not only created a brilliant suspense thriller, but has written with great sensitivity, humor and poignancy about the world of the insane. His most unusual characters come to life on the page, and I so liked and cared about many of them, as much as I hated Dr. "Gulp-a-pill" and Mr. "Evil." Francis, is one of the most sympathetic, intelligent narrators I have "listened to" in a long time. This is a fabulous tale which will grip you until the last page, and haunt you long after you finish.

This is a must read!!

JANA