A blackmailer is playing with fire when he makes a terrifying serial killer his target.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
THE MIDNIGHT ROOM by Ed Gorman,
By
This review is from: The Midnight Room (Mass Market Paperback)
Cindy Baines is a cute girl. She is the daughter of less than accomplished parents--her mother is a drinker, and her dad is a fundamentalist whack. They live in a trailer on the wrong side of town, but despite everything she seems to have a bright future. She is intelligent, beautiful, and very well liked. Unfortunately she is also the target of a demented serial killer.
When Cindy disappears the community is in near panic; Cindy isn't the first girl to disappear and everyone is afraid she won't be the last. There is a heavy load of pressure placed on the police department--particularly its small detective bureau--to find the girl and stop the killer. The detectives assigned to the case all have their own problems. Two of them are former lovers, and the third drinks too much and is a little crazy. THE MIDNIGHT ROOM isn't a typical serial killer novel. The killer is revealed early in the story--the second chapter--and its focus is less on the killer and more on the drama that plays between the detectives, their work, and their families. It's important to stress that it isn't a drama. It's very much in the crime noir form and Mr Gorman uses the tropes and expectations to develop the dark, sharp and poignant struggle of good and evil that rages in his characters, just as it rages in us all. The characters are varied and well created--none are completely good and none are completely bad. Two of the detectives are brothers--Steve and Michael Scanlon. The older is their father's favorite, but he has never been quite right. He wants everything fast and easy, while the younger is the more dependable, but underappreciated, son and detective. The story whirls around the two in a frenzy of misfortune, bad choices, and plain bad luck. There is also a street tough ex-con named Leo Rice who is out for revenge. Steve Scanlon killed his brother while on the beat a few years back and now Leo wants his pound. Rice is the perfect street tough. He is hard, violent and stupid, all in one pure mixture. Add to that the serial killer, an aging father, a tough female detective and a missing girl who are all starkly vivid in Gorman's deceptively simple prose, and you have a story that is vibrant and true. THE MIDNIGHT ROOM is a terrific lean and hard crime thriller. Its roots are deep in the hardboiled and noir genres, but it is nothing less than original. The characters and its dark vision of an unfair world raise it well beyond the expected, and in the end it's the very darkness that offers redemption for both the characters and the reader. -Gravetapping
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Gorman's best yet, his "Gold Medal novel",
By
This review is from: The Midnight Room (Mass Market Paperback)
Detective Steve Scanlon's life is out of control. Married with kids, he also has an expensive mistress -- or thinks he does. Actually, ever since Nicole found out he was married, she'd rather he left her alone, that he's stop buying her expensive gifts in a desperate attempt to re-win her affections.
Steve doesn't give up easily, but he needs more money. He's been neglecting his family, his wife and kids, his brother Michael (also a cop), and their father in the nursing home, leaving Michael to continually make up stories to cover for him more than Michael wants or their father believes. But Steve had a solution to all his problems. He originally meant only to rob Dr. Peter Olson, but now he knows what the doctor has been up to: kidnapping local girls and torturing them to death in his basement dungeon. Steve found in Olson's safe the DVDs the doctor made of his last two captives, and Olson will pay to keep them secret. It is therefore in Scanlon's best interest that Dr. Olson is not discovered for his latest victim -- a recently missing girl named Cindy Baines. The police have stepped up the investigation since the last victim's skull arrived in her mother's mailbox. Luckily, Scanlon is the investigating officer on the case along with his partner, Kim Edwards -- who, not coincidentally, Dr. Olson has just begun dating. And that's just the beginning of author Ed Gorman's The Midnight Room, a dark ride that isn't even over when the main story has played out. There's more to come, and it's even more shocking. Ed Gorman is one of the great dark suspense novelists working today, and The Midnight Room is his best work yet. Its pieces are assembled bit by bit, and it takes a while for the reader to figure out what exactly is going on. (The strangely misleading blurb on the back cover -- which seems to be advertising the book as a horror novel -- goes a long way toward clouding the waters.) But Gorman always plays fair and is only keeping back some information for greater effect in later pages. The Midnight Room is a wholly modern novel, but its roots lie in the Gold Medal novels of the 1950s and '60s. Gorman's influences are right there on the page. His skill at plotting is highly reminiscent of John D. MacDonald's standalone (that is, non-Travis McGee) novels. But his deft control of a multitude of major characters shows the marked influence of John Farris, particularly the author's intriguingly complex Harrison High. (Though Farris also wrote a handful of Gold Medals himself under the name Steve Brackeen.) Gorman himself has called The Midnight Room his own "Gold Medal novel" and dedicates it to four "old friends who were masters of the form": Peter Rabe, Stephen Marlowe, William Campbell Gault, and Robert Colby. I think they would be proud to be connected to this book. It is the culmination of a life-long love of hardboiled crime novels and is a worthy addition to their ranks.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Gorman Keeps You Hooked,
By
This review is from: The Midnight Room (Mass Market Paperback)
Ed Gorman, along with Tom Piccirilli, is one of the best thriller writers working today. Gorman has an uncanny ability to cut straight to the heart of a scene with assured confidence. His astounding economy of words propels the story at a breakneck pace, forcing you to flip pages as fast as you can. Gorman's writing has none of the flowery, overly descriptive garbage that so many authors find themselves guilty of. Ed Gorman is the real deal.
The description on the back of the book, however, is a bit misleading, and I found myself slightly disappointed when I realized the promise of the story's synopsis was not actually what was between the pages, at least in regards to what the doctor will do to his blackmailer. Still, The Midnight Room was tight and filled with numerous surprises and twists that were delightful to discover. Maybe one or two convenient coincidences too many, sure, but for thriller fans, this is one you cannot miss.
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