The Madman's Tale

Starred review from May 3, 2004
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.

March 1, 2004
Committed to the now-shuttered Western State Hospital when he was young, fortyish Francis Petrel starts recalling the circumstances of a nurse's grisly murder-just as the killer comes out of hiding.

Copyright 2004 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2004
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.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2004, American Library Association.)

July 1, 2004
When Francis Petrel, a former inmate of the Western State Hospital, returns for a commemoration, he begins to remember events surrounding the brutal rape and murder of a young nurse 20 years before. At the same time, prosecutor Lucy Jones has arrived to determine whether the nurse's death could be related to several recent killings. Despite the lack of help from hospital authorities, Lucy puts together a team made up of Francis, another inmate, and two orderlies. As his long-suppressed recollections become clearer, Francis goes off his medications and begins hearing voices and maybe having hallucinations. Poised between sanity and madness, he is able to empathize with others, much like a profiler, and begins to understand the killer, placing Lucy and her team in great danger. Katzenbach (The Analyst) is a master of psychological details, making readers believe in Francis's reality, and he maintains a heightened tension that hurtles the reader to the riveting final pages. For every fiction collection. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 3/1/04.]-Jo Ann Vicarel, Cleveland Heights-University Heights P.L., OH

Copyright 2004 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.