THE CROSSKILLER

by Marcel Montecino ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 26, 1988

In Montecino's debut novel, a splendid Jewish policeman--his career and personal life a wreck--sobers up long enough to track down the savage little lunatic who has been murdering and otherwise terrorizing the Jews of Los Angeles. The cop is Jack Gold, a big, clever detective who was seduced from the straight and narrow when he worked the narcotics squad and fell for the jazz he heard in the nightclubs--and fell even harder for Angelique, a gorgeous heroin addict inherited from a busted musician. Gold's once-promising career has been on hold ever since Angelique's messy death, and, except for his daughter, his family is lost to him. The little lunatic is Sonny Walker, a stupid and spectacularly vicious piece of human garbage whose hates and resentments have been fanned into a nasty, uncontrolled flame by the public ravings of L.A.'s loony Klansmen and other sociopaths. When Sonny goes round the bend and starts murdering Jews, Gold's chief, the man who has frozen his promotion, cynically assigns the detective to head a task force in find the killer. The task force consists of the disgraced detective Zamora, a handsome kid who posed for a Playgirl spread in nothing but his holster. Dodging the knives thrown by his ex-wife, the local congressman, the chief, and the leader of the local Jewish paramilitary group--as well as trying to keep a lid on his own private demons while teaching Zamora how to be a real cop--Gold slowly but relentlessly gets his hooks into Sonny Walker. A fine, rich crime story. Gold is great; L.A. is at last a flesh-and-blood city with a normal temperature.

Pub Date: April 26, 1988

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Arbor House/Morrow

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1988

Categories: FICTION