The Serialist

Failed author Harry Bloch writes a sex-fantasy column called "Slut Whisperer" for a HUSTLER-type magazine and ghostwrites student papers on the side. This darkly comic character offers a well-met challenge for narrator Bronson Pinchot. When Bloch is summoned by serial killer Darien Clay, who is on death row, to write his true confessions, Pinchot's storytelling ably transitions from the narrative voice of the self-deprecating Jewish author to that of the truly evil man in prison. Other characters who are well portrayed are Clay's hard-bitten attorney, Bloch's teenaged business manager for the ghostwriting business, and the stripper sister of one of Clay's victims, who becomes Bloch's lover. Gordon's thriller is interspersed with bizarre voyages into Bloch's soft-porn vampire and fantasy tales. Pinchot negotiates all these elements with alacrity and humor. D.P.D. (c) AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine

January 18, 2010
A seedy freelance writer provides the wry narrative voice for Gordon's winning debut, a darkly humorous thriller. New Yorker Harry Bloch, who once had lofty literary ambitions, has spent the past two decades as a hack, mostly as an advice columnist called the Slut Whisperer for Raunchy
magazine. Bloch also earns cash by doing homework for affluent private school students, a side business managed by a precocious teenage girl who was the first pupil he was paid to tutor. His boring life takes an unexpected turn after he receives a letter from death-row inmate Darian Clay (aka the Photo Killer), who, as a fan of the Slut Whisperer, thinks Bloch is right for the job of assisting him on his memoirs. In exchange for Clay revealing where he concealed the heads of his female victims, Bloch must seek out women who have written to Clay and write stories about their having sex with the serial killer. A number of plausible plot twists help shift the story from farce to whodunit.