The Memory Man

December 15, 2018
Abuse of children by pedophile priests is a fit subject for novelists now, and none makes better use of this horrifying material than Savile. His story starts conventionally enough for a thriller, with a sadist kidnapping and killing prominent men. But then a pattern emerges. Severed body parts?a tongue, a finger, an eyeball?are mailed out, and the now high-profile case becomes a job for British detective Peter Ash. He's an interesting fit for a narrative that draws ever closer to the church. He mocks people who "believe in something so obviously made up," like Moses "downloading the Ten Commandments." Yet he speaks of his own "cop Holy Trinity": means, motive, and opportunity. As he and his colleague, the spiky Swedish cop Francesca "Frankie" Varg, close in on the killer, Savile turns the last quarter of his novel over to a detailing of the decades-old crimes against children that sparked this rash of torture-killing. As with up-close accounts of Nazi horrors, this section is difficult to take. All the while, it's impossible to turn away from.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)