Dark Specter

Dark Specter

Michael Dibdin

Vintage (1996)

Tags: Mystery
Mysteryttt

In this majestically unnerving novel, Michael Dibdin, the creator of the acclaimed Aurelio Zen mysteries, explores themes that might have been ripped out of today's headlines, as he charts America's dual epidemic of religious cultism and random violence.The murders take place in distant cities and with no apparent motive. All that connects them is their cold-blooded efficiency. But a dogged Seattle detective and a horribly bereaved survivor are about to come face-to-face with their perpetrator—a man named Los, a self-styled prophet who has the power to make his followers travel thousands of miles to kill for him. Out of mayhem and revelation, the minutiae of police work and the explosive contents of a psychotic mind, Michael Dibdin orchestrates a tour de force of dread. This should be read with the lights on and the doors firmly bolted.

From the Trade Paperback edition.

Amazon.com Review

Dibdin is a connoisseur's thriller writer, widely admired for his neat craftmanship in such novels as Dead Lagoon.

In this stunning new novel he once again widens the boundaries of his fiction, linking seemingly unrelated lives: a hapless family man whose world is blasted apart by apparently random events, police detectives in several cities investigating cold-blooded multiple murders, members of a cult whose initiation rite is an act of pure, rationalized malevolence. All these lives spin in desperate orbit around a man known to his followers as Los, the Eternal Prophet--a man whose mind is a ground zero of psychosis and mayhem.

From Publishers Weekly

Poets and psychopathology converge in another crime thriller as Dibdin, known best for his Aurelio Zen procedurals set in Italy, writes about a religious cult led by a Blake-obsessed fanatic. The evil in this tale, however, which is at once more organized and more random than that in Michael Connelly's Poe-prompted The Poet, also ranges across the U.S. Dibdin meticulously establishes the skeleton of his intricate story, introducing readers first to a boy who by chance survives the shooting murder of everyone else in his Seattle household. More murders-near Chicago, in Kansas City, in Atlanta-are related in chapters that alternate with those narrated by Phil, a college English teacher in Minneapolis, who is married and the father of a little boy. Phil runs into Sam, a Vietnam vet with whom he shared a house in their druggie student years. Later, Phil's son disappears and is presumed dead; his wife commits suicide and Phil, unmoored, visits Sam on an island off the Washington coast. There the threads of this plot, which Dibdin has so masterfully laid out, are drawn together in a diabolical pattern that is loosely pinned on the writings of Blake and ends, as it began, in a house whose occupants, bound and gagged, are threatened with execution. Dibdin's fans may decry his having exchanged elegant, dark Venice for this glossy, plastic-colored U.S. setting, but his deft plotting and reliable characterization are fully present in this top-notch thriller. 50,000 first printing; author tour.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Dark Specter

Michael Dibdin

Vintage (1996)

Tags: Mystery
Mysteryttt

In this majestically unnerving novel, Michael Dibdin, the creator of the acclaimed Aurelio Zen mysteries, explores themes that might have been ripped out of today's headlines, as he charts America's dual epidemic of religious cultism and random violence.The murders take place in distant cities and with no apparent motive. All that connects them is their cold-blooded efficiency. But a dogged Seattle detective and a horribly bereaved survivor are about to come face-to-face with their perpetrator—a man named Los, a self-styled prophet who has the power to make his followers travel thousands of miles to kill for him. Out of mayhem and revelation, the minutiae of police work and the explosive contents of a psychotic mind, Michael Dibdin orchestrates a tour de force of dread. This should be read with the lights on and the doors firmly bolted.

From the Trade Paperback edition.

Amazon.com Review

Dibdin is a connoisseur's thriller writer, widely admired for his neat craftmanship in such novels as Dead Lagoon.

In this stunning new novel he once again widens the boundaries of his fiction, linking seemingly unrelated lives: a hapless family man whose world is blasted apart by apparently random events, police detectives in several cities investigating cold-blooded multiple murders, members of a cult whose initiation rite is an act of pure, rationalized malevolence. All these lives spin in desperate orbit around a man known to his followers as Los, the Eternal Prophet--a man whose mind is a ground zero of psychosis and mayhem.

From Publishers Weekly

Poets and psychopathology converge in another crime thriller as Dibdin, known best for his Aurelio Zen procedurals set in Italy, writes about a religious cult led by a Blake-obsessed fanatic. The evil in this tale, however, which is at once more organized and more random than that in Michael Connelly's Poe-prompted The Poet, also ranges across the U.S. Dibdin meticulously establishes the skeleton of his intricate story, introducing readers first to a boy who by chance survives the shooting murder of everyone else in his Seattle household. More murders-near Chicago, in Kansas City, in Atlanta-are related in chapters that alternate with those narrated by Phil, a college English teacher in Minneapolis, who is married and the father of a little boy. Phil runs into Sam, a Vietnam vet with whom he shared a house in their druggie student years. Later, Phil's son disappears and is presumed dead; his wife commits suicide and Phil, unmoored, visits Sam on an island off the Washington coast. There the threads of this plot, which Dibdin has so masterfully laid out, are drawn together in a diabolical pattern that is loosely pinned on the writings of Blake and ends, as it began, in a house whose occupants, bound and gagged, are threatened with execution. Dibdin's fans may decry his having exchanged elegant, dark Venice for this glossy, plastic-colored U.S. setting, but his deft plotting and reliable characterization are fully present in this top-notch thriller. 50,000 first printing; author tour.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Michael Dibdin is the author of many novels, including
The Dying of the Light, Dead Lagoon, Così Fan Tutti
, and
Ratking
, which won the Crime Writers Association Gold Dagger Award. He lives in Seattle.

ALSO BY MICHAEL DIBDIN

Così Fan Tutti
Dead Lagoon
The Dying of the Light
Cabal
Vendetta
Dirty Tricks
The Tryst
Ratking
A Rich Full Death
The Last Sherlock Holmes Story

For Kathrine, Who helped

And Tharmas calld to the Dark Spectre who upon the shores
With dislocated limbs had falln. The Spectre rose in pain
A Shadow blue obscure & dismal.

William Blake:
Vala, or the Four Zoas

J
amie shot Ronnie Ho four times. Once in the head, twice in the chest, and once in the gut, where he’d heard it hurt real bad. Two shots went wide.

“Jamie!” yelled his mom from the porch. She’d been talking to Marsha Dawson for about an hour, and had gone outside, still talking, to pick up the mail.

“What?” he yelled back.

His mother appeared in the doorway, portable in one hand, her blue bathrobe billowing around her, sorting through the mail.

“What’d I tell you about using that thing in here?”

“But, Mom …”

“Junk, junk, bill, junk. How come no one ever sends me a real letter?”

Jamie sulkily unpopped the suction caps of the darts from the mirror. Two misses wasn’t bad, and if it’d really been Ronnie Ho he’d have got in closer before he squeezed the trigger.

“I bet Wayne gave you that darn thing, just to bug me.”

“I bought it with my allowance.”

“Get him to pay a dime in child support, no way. But any crap guaranteed to drive me crazy, no problem.”

“I’m
bored
, Mom!”

His mother sashayed through to the kitchen, pushing buttons on the phone.

“Do your homework.”

“I’ve done it.”

“Yeah, right!”

“I have
too!”

He knew she knew he was lying, but if she called him on it he’d ask her to help him out, and she didn’t know diddly about math. They’d changed it all since she was at school. Plus he was getting OK grades—she’d back off.

“Did you get new batteries for my Game Boy?” he said, following her down the hall into the kitchen.

“Hi, Kelly!” his mom said in the chirpy voice she used for leaving a message. “Friday’s our girls’ night out? I was wondering if I could catch a ride with you. Call me, OK?”

“Mom? Did you get those new …”

“I forgot.”

“Oh,
Mom!”

“Why don’t you go downstairs and play with Kevin and Ronnie?”

“They won’t let me. They keep saying I’m too little.”

“Well, they’ll just have to …”

The phone rang. His mother drifted around the corner, through the dining area and back into the living room.

“Hello? Oh hi, honey. You are? Is it OK with her mom and dad? Uh huh. Sure, as long as they don’t mind. What time’ll you be home? OK. See you.”