The Skin Gods

November 14, 2005
In this high-body-count chiller from the author of The Rosary Girls
, Philadelphia homicide detectives Jessica Balzano and Kevin Byrne are up against a savagely inventive serial killer with a yen for stomach-churning cinema verité. Copycat murders modeled on Psycho
, Fatal Attraction
and other movies are terrorizing the city, as the "auteur" slayer splices film of his bloody re-enactments into rental videos surreptitiously stolen from and then returned to video stores. Byrne, recovering from a near-fatal gunshot wound and swallowing Vicodin like candy, is working half time, so it's up to his eager partner, Balzano, to take the lead in the investigation. Montanari's short, punchy chapters propel the convoluted—and kinky—plot, which caroms between the big-budget movie sets of a Philadelphia filmmaker made good and an underground porn industry where good girls go bad. Several potential perpetrators rear their creepy heads, but the real killer comes out of left field—though readers very attentive to scattered clues won't be too taken aback by the gory denouement. Byrne's awkward relationship with his deaf teenage daughter, Colleen, after his divorce, and Balzano's concern for her precocious three-year-old daughter, Sophie, after she boots her philandering husband (and fellow cop) out of the house, add welcome humanity to a grisly, atmospheric thriller.

December 1, 2005
In Philadelphia, a serial killer is replicating death scenes from famous movies, even going so far as to splice his grizzly re-creations (the shower scene from " Psycho" , the chainsaw scene from " Scarface" ) into VHS rental copies of the films. Homicide cops Jessica Balzano and Kevin Byrne are tough, inventive detectives who are determined to bring the killer down, assuming they can figure out the madness to his method. The two cops make a good team, their individual strengths and weaknesses playing off each other nicely; the author avoids the usual lighthearted cop-banter, which would have been distracting in this intensely dramatic story. Every hero needs a villain, naturally, and, in chapters written from the killer's point of view, Montanari lets us get up close and personal with the murderous psycho. The book is full of supporting characters that could be central to the plot or could be elaborate red herrings; either way, the author keeps us on our toes. And one of the story's many threads, which leads us into Kevin Byrne's past, packs a solid emotional wallop. The best-selling Montanari has another hit on his hands here. The " Skin Gods" is perfect for anyone who enjoys a well-crafted thriller. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2005, American Library Association.)