From Booklist
Michael Schiftmann, born in a Cleveland slum, is a highly intelligent, urbane author of a grisly, best-selling series about a serial killer. But beneath Michael's charming exterior lurks a cold-blooded psychopathic killer. The brutal murders he commits serve, as Michael puts it, as "background research" for his books, which feed on "society's sick fascination with violence." He has committed 13 murders, each time leaving behind a letter of the alphabet written in the victim's blood. After the brutalized bodies of Michael's two latest victims are discovered in a massage parlor in Nashville, FBI agent Hank Powell decides he can't rest until the "Alphabet Man" is caught. It takes just one slipup on Michael's part for Powell to get close enough to capture him. But Michael refuses to acknowledge defeat and conjures up a few more ghastly surprises. Although the prose is occasionally uneven, the plot is chockablock with unusual twists, the tension is palpable, and the denouement is terrifying. An edge-of-the-seat thriller. Emily Melton
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