Another Righard Montanari mystery to review
As you know if you’ve been reading this blog for a while (and if not, why?) I’ve already reviewed two of Richard Montanari’s novels and I liked them both, a lot. So, when I saw, “The Violet Hours” on the shelf at my local library, I snatched it up. It’s the first book by Montanari written when he was quite a bit younger, I think. The writing is a bit pretentious and there were several leads left hanging, but overall a good book.
“The Violet Hours” starts with a very horrific murder of a priest who’s having sex (not for the first time) with a prostitute. We don’t even find out all the details until later but we do know that the poor man is give a massive dose of heroin and then has his throat slit. Yeah, the whole book is pretty graphic, so if you don’t like that sort of thing – beware.
I read a little further and had to put the book down. We are in the murderer’s POV when he looks through a window and sees a man, “kick an old dog under the chin so hard his teeth flew out of his mouth.” I almost got sick to my stomach. I suppose the author was trying show how awful the dog-kicker was or something. I don’t care. An author can do what he wants to people, they can generally protect themselves but when you start hurting dogs, I draw the line. Sadly the author never justified this event in any way. After two days, I put on my big girl shoes and decided to give the novel one more try.
I finished the book and it was well-written. As with Montanari’s other novels, we get chapters from the bad guy’s POV. In this book, he’s getting revenge for something that happened 20 years prior on Halloween. Yes, now in the present, it’s almost Halloween – that old ticking clock. The man is clearly crazy, bad, nutty and seriously weird. In this book, I did guess early on who the killer was and I was right. There were a lot of twists and turns and several large plot holes that never got filled, but hey, it was the guys first book. I’m still wondering where the killer got all his money – big mystery.
So, now I’ve read three of Montanari’s novels. They were good, well-written and for the most part, entertaining, but I will never read another one of his books, never. Why?
He killed a dog.
Tags: lots of twists and turns., scary bad-guy, sizzling mystery