The Night Spider [Mass Market Paperback]

John Lutz (Author)

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Kensington Books (2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786015160
• ISBN-13: 978-0786015160
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 4.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #583,856 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars exciting police procedural thriller, November 7, 2003

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Night Spider (Mass Market Paperback)

The serial killer murdered his third high rise victim with the same MO of tying up his prey with sheets so tight they dig into the skin before he stabs her thirty-six to thirty-seven times. The wrappings are so tight that little blood seeps to the floor in spite of the multiple stabbings. NYPD Detective Paula Ramboquette is assigned lead as her senior partner Roy Bickerstaff nears retirement. Still both are amazed at the crime scene as it appears a spiderman climbed up thirty floors on the side of a building before entering the apartment of Sally Bridge through a window.

Assistant Chief Roland Larkin worries that this case will need a special hand so he persuades disability retired former homicide captain Thomas Horn to lead the inquiries. He looks at the crime scenes especially the last one and shows that the killer did not go up, but came down the shorter distance from the roof. However, the Night Spider welcomes the challenge of Horn as he has no doubt that the retired cop or perhaps his wife will become his next victim.

THE NIGHT SPIDER is an exciting police procedural thriller that starts at an incredible pace and for the most part maintains the action until the end. The tale is incredibly gripping when the killer takes center stage during the novel. A subplot involving Thomas' personal relationships unnecessarily horns in on the prime cat and mouse scenario that makes the book worth reading. Sub-genre fans will be elated with John Lutz's strong Manhattan police procedural.

Harriet Klausner

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars ARACHNOPHILE ALERT, August 27, 2004

By 

Michael Butts (Berkeley Springs, WV USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Night Spider (Mass Market Paperback)

THE NIGHT SPIDER is a tense and original novel. John Lutz draws the portrait of a serial killer with a penchant for enshrouding his female victims in their bedsheets, then stabs them and lets them bleed to death. He manages to get into their high rise apartments without being detected, and gets away too. Detective Thomas Horn is called out of an early retirement to assist NYPD in capturing this maniacal killer. He is assisted by Cajun Paula Ramboquette and almost retired Roy Brickstaff. Horn also has a lovely wife, Anne, head of the radiographic department at Kingdom Hospital, who is being sued over the anesthesia-induced coma of a four year old boy, whose parents John and Cindy Vine, are hellbent on making the hospital pay.
Lutz' characterizations are sharp and there are several twists in the intriguing plot. Two areas bothered me though: one--little is given to justify the hasty estrangement of Thomas and his wife; and there's a lot of scenes involving a sculptor that don't seem to have anything to do with the plot and could have been left out and the book would not have suffered in the least.
However, this is my first Lutz book and I enjoyed it enough to seek out others.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A good book, but I'm a little confused, July 2, 2004

By 

JodyBug (Kentucky, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Night Spider (Mass Market Paperback)

I thought this was a really good book, however there were a few things that kept it from being a great book. I thought the detectives were very believable, especially Thomas Horn. I'm confused (and I don't know if this is the fault of the author or his editor) because in a flashback on page 100 it is 1982 and the killer is seven yrs. old. Then in another on page 198 it is 1978 and the killer is 12 yrs. old. I couldn't figure out if we were dealing with two different people, maybe brothers, or what was going on. This kept me very confused and I kept waiting for more to be revealed to let me know if there were indeed two killers. There were two or three other points in the book where things just didn't make sense. It's a shame because otherwise this could have been a five star book in a league with (not to beat a dead horse) Silence of the Lambs. Hey Pinnacle Books, do you need a proofreader??