The Dead Letters [Kindle Edition]

Tom Piccirilli (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Five years ago Eddie Whitt's 5-year-old daughter was murdered by a serial killer. Dubbed "Killjoy" by the press, the killer ultimately claimed 21 child victims before disappearing without a trace. Eddie, having long since lost faith in law enforcement, has devoted his life to finding Killjoy, who still torments Whitt with a constant string of ranting letters. But Eddie, like the Nassau County cops, is at a lost to explain the murderer's new modus-operandi: kidnapping infants from abusive homes and giving them to families whose children he killed a half-decade before. No matter how repentant Killjoy may seem, the long-suffering Eddie is determined to hunt him down. Suspense keeps dogged pace with the dark, churning emotions of Eddie; Piccirilli does a scarily precise job delving into the mind of a man so overcome with grief that his irrational actions begin to mirror those of the killer he pursues. Although Piccirilli can push his characters' behavior over the top (Eddie is so crazed with frustration and anger that he gnaws sections of his car until his teeth break), his story keeps the pages turning through to the chilling, poignant end.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Product Description

Five years ago, Eddie Whitt’s daughter Sarah became the victim of a serial killer known as Killjoy, and Whitt vowed to hunt him down—no matter what the cost. But the police have given up. And Killjoy has stopped killing…and in some bizarre act of repentance has begun kidnapping abused infants and leaving them with the parents of his original victims.

The only clues to Killjoy’s identity lie in a trail of taunting letters. And even as they lead Whitt to a deadly cult—and closer to his prey—he begins to suspect that, like his wife, he’s losing his grip on reality: Sarah’s dollhouse is filled with eerie activity, as if her murder never occurred. As dark forces rise around him, Whitt must choose—between believing that evil can repent…and stepping into a trap set by a killer who may know the only way to save Whitt’s soul.


From the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 247 KB
• Print Length: 400 pages
• Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0553384074
• Publisher: Bantam (September 26, 2006)
• Sold by: Random House Digital, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B000JMKTPU
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #448,323 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

More About the Author

Tom Piccirilli is the author of more than twenty novels including THE LAST KIND WORDS, SHADOW SEASON, THE COLD SPOT, THE COLDEST MILE, and A CHOIR OF ILL CHILDREN. He's won two International Thriller Awards and four Bram Stoker Awards, as well as having been nominated for the Edgar, the World Fantasy Award, the Macavity, and Le Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire.

www.thecoldspot.blogspot.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another Great Tom Piccirilli Novel, November 19, 2006

By 

T.T. Zuma - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Dead Letters (Mass Market Paperback)

Piccirilli writes dark. His novels are full of dread, sadness, and his characters often have little hope. They are all misfits of some kind and all of them have lost something. It could be their limbs, their lifestyle, their freedom, their sanity, normalcy, or a loved one. In this book it's the loss of a child that haunts the protagonist.

The plot concerns a man who has dedicated his life to finding the serial killer who murdered his daughter, and then other children. The killer smothered his daughter in her bed while she slept with her own pillow. After several more killings, a twist comes into the case. The killer starts kidnapping children from abusive homes and then brings them to the families of the children he killed.

This novel has all of the characteristics you come to expect from a Piccirrilli novel. A main character filled with tremendous loss of some kind, guilt, and a need for closure or acceptance. It has some really strange people in it in the form of a wacky cult who's involved with their own serial killings whose members who are as odd and deadly as they come. The story has supernatural elements with both the wacky cult and the main character himself to keep horror readers adequately enthused. And it has an ending that defines a Piccirrilli novel.

I enjoyed this novel much more than Headstone City. Its plot was straightforward without a lot of sub plots or distractions. Its mood was sullen and depressing giving punch to the chills and very thrilling portions of the story. And the story itself was disturbing enough to make me come back to it in my mind after I finished the last page.

When an author writes a book as great as November Mourns, (or even Choir of Ill Children) there is a tendency to compare all other books he writes after it to that masterpiece. This is unfair to the author (look at King's work after "It") and it's tempting to do so. But I'm gonna do it anyway...this book is not as good as the two mentioned above, but it is certainly a great read and I would place it at number 3 of my all time favorite Piccirilli novels. I would recommend this book to Piccirilli fans and to those who have not read the author before.

T.T.Zuma

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Better than the last novel and November Mourns was fantastic!, November 19, 2006

By 

Troy J. Knutson "species the book fan" (Memphis, TN USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Dead Letters (Mass Market Paperback)

Tom Piccirilli's novels just get better and better and The Dead Letters is no exception to that theory. HisownPicSelf drew me into the story with his tragic "hero" Eddie Whitt, a man with a dead daughter and an insane self-abusive wife.

Being a father myself with a young daughter, I can relate to the wide range of emotions that Eddie goes thru and that makes this novel real for me.

Great scenes, bizarre characters, superb dialogue and a nice satisfying sad ending, this novel really had me close to tears several times.

Do yourself a favor and pick up a copy, read it and tell me why I'm wrong.

Troy

10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hardcore literary thriller, December 5, 2006

By 

Christine Menendez (St. Andreu de Llavaneres, Barcelona Spain) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Dead Letters (Mass Market Paperback)

I ran into Tom Piccirilli's work several years ago with a little cult
horror gem called "Hexes" and was absolutely amazed at the quality
of the writing. Here was a guy writing literate cult horror. Since
then, I've read pretty much everything he's written and have
watched his stories slowly change from cult horror to taut thrillers.
And his writing just gets better and better...
Tighter than a drum, with sentences as clean as steel, so
beautifully polished they make you want to shout. Or maybe scream. I
was so seriously impressed with Dead Letters that I read it twice.
Well, the first time I just raced through to find out who the bad
guy was and missed a lot. The second time I revelled in the prose itself,
in the characterizations,in the oddities.

I don't want to stretch this review out to thousands of words which
you won't read. You want me to tell you whether or not this book is
worth reading. That is the value of this review, both to Amazon and
to the author. Hell, yeah, it's worth reading. My semi-autistic son
read it in two days and couldn't put it down. The story itself is a
killer. A serial child murderer who turns into a kind of Robin Hood,
stealing children from bad homes and placing them on the doorsteps
of the parents whose children he's killed? How much worse than this
does it get? Our hero in this story is a guy called Eddie Whitt,
who was the first victim of the guy he unknowingly dubbed
"Killjoy". His five year old daughter, Sarah was abducted and
killed, his wife ended up in an institution, biting her hands to
the bone, and Eddie was left with the problem of finding this guy,
this killer. When a baby is left on his doorstep, he gives it back,
getting a message from his wife: what kind of a father are you?
How much more painful than this does it get? Actually, it gets worse.
Whitt is getting cryptic nonsense letters from Killjoy which may or
may not hold clues as to his identity. And, poor Whitt gets involved
in searching for a murdering cult member who just might be Killjoy.

This story is so full
of pain and empathy that you"ll get another one of those lines
between your eyebrows just reading it. It puts you right there, where
poor Whitt is, his child dead, the changling returned, and his wife
biting herself to bloody bits. It is a painful story which gives
the word "catharsis" a whole new meaning. But, I should throw this in,
there is also plenty of comic relief to lighten the incredible tension.

Too many words already. Well, what do you want me to say? Good
book, read it. Yeah, that too. You want a short review. I can't do
it. Piccirilli is a really terrific writer, one of the best writers
in the English language extant, regardless of genre. When you open
page one of one of his books you fall into a landscape from which
you cannot escape until you reach the last page. Nobody writes like
this. Except TomPic.