BLOOD UNDER THE BRIDGE

by Bruce Zimmerman ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 21, 1989

A slapdash but promising psychological thriller about Quinn Parker, phobia therapist turned detective when his friend and sometime lover Sonia Lucia is decapitated and the San Francisco police suspect that he didn't go straight home after watching Top Hat with the deceased the night before. Deciding (on the basis of a very illogical clue) that the killer videotaped Sonia's murder--and believing that the killing is connected to the decapitation of sex-therapist Sherri Kaline several months earlier--Quinn ignores Lt. Mannion's warnings to stay off the case, the unfriendly reception he gets from several suspects he approaches, and a confession by a suspect the police have caught red-handed at still another similar murder. He focuses instead on Ronald Hemming, a literature professor who'd been intimate with both victims. With the help of Sherri's friend Kate Ulrich, Quinn digs into Hemming's troubled past in Virginia, realizes that the murders ape the punishments of the damned in Dante's Inferno, and breaks into Hemming's apartment in search of the fatal videotape. But it isn't until after Hemming's apparent leap from the Golden Gate Bridge that Quinn finally finds the clue that reveals the pattern behind the murders. First-novelist Zimmerman's plot is mainly a string of obligatory scenes, but they're handled with a matter-of-fact freshness that avoids clich‚. And Quinn Parker, though no threat to Sherlock Holmes, is a serious guy who can be genuinely funny without working tit it. It would be nice to see him again.

Pub Date: June 21, 1989

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Harper & Row

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1989

Categories: FICTION