Thrillers, Crimes - Fiction, Occupations - Fiction, Police Stories, Character Types - Fiction

Handyman

Name: Handyman
Author: Jean Heller
ISBN: 9780312858186

by Jean Heller

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Overview

The press calls him the Heartbreak Killer because of his obvious compulsion to mutilate the hearts of his victims, but he thinks of himself as the Handyman, from a favorite old song. At first he targeted prostitutes, but lately he's been going upscale - a teacher, a doctor. The police, under growing community and political pressure, are doing their best, but they can't find the common thread that links the women and their murderer. They can't even predict which Tampa, Florida, neighborhood will be the site of his next attack. Cynthia Diamond, a TV news anchorwoman, becomes her own biggest story when the Handyman makes an attempt on her life. It's no fun for Cynthia suddenly to be on the other side of the camera or to have reporters camped in her front yard. Is Cynthia still the focus of his obsession, or will another woman become his prey? The police are doing everything they can to find him, but all their efforts may be too little, too late. The Handyman's tenuous grip on sanity is almost gone. Someone is going to die. Soon.

A new thriller from "a first-rate journalist who has become a first-rate novelist" Allen Drury, New York Times bestselling author. A serial killer is stalking Tampa, and the police can't find the common thread that links the victims to their killer. All they know is that he's getting more violent--and more daring--with every attack.

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

A pair of plucky heroines adds interest to this otherwise predictable, and graphically violent, suspense novel by Heller (Maximum Impact), an investigative reporter for the St. Petersburg Times. Eugene Rickey, it's quickly revealed, is a serial killer. In his day job, he is a talented and conscientious Tampa, Fla., handyman-a master of the building trades with a solid reputation. But he is also a homicidal maniac who tortures his female victims before killing them. The police and county sheriff's experts follow a series of clues and red herrings as Rickey is shown stalking his targets, first a TV newswoman and then a female architect. Heller's vivid imagination of this demented man's psyche is offset, unfortunately, by some clunky clues and distracting subplots, including one involving sexual harassment in the newsroom. While the author writes taut, powerful prose, moreover, readers may be turned off by the uses to which she puts it: the opening chapter, for all its skillful renderings, is little more than a sustained exercise in literary sadism. (Nov.)

Library Journal

Only after all the doors and windows have been locked is it safe to begin reading Handyman. Eugene Rickey is an honest and dependable jack-of-all-trades. For fun and relaxation, though, he rapes, tortures, and kills. The first chapter of this novel is so realistically bloody and gruesome that it could turn the most ardent opponent of the death penalty into an advocate. Thankfully, this is the tale's only episode of out-and-out gore. The rest of the book describes the fast-paced hunt for the Handyman by Det. Benjamin Britton and Cynthia Diamond, a television journalist. Heller's Maximum Impact, Forge, 1993 writing is consistently good, and she kindly gives the reader an occasional respite from fear through her subplots. Highly recommended, but read only with the lights on.-Dawn L. Anderson, North Richland Hills P.L., Tex.

George Needham

The first chapter of this latest serial-killer thriller offers a murder so graphic and disgusting that the reader may want to take a shower and a Valium before going further. The tale then settles in as a fairly routine police procedural, with the point of view moving from the detective who is leading the investigative task force to the killer to two of his potential victims. There is little violent action in the rest of the novel, but author Heller builds the tension with supreme skill, drawing a portrait of the killer that makes him understandable, although never sympathetic. Heller, a newspaper reporter, presents a TV news anchorwoman as one of the potential victims, and she uses this character to roast the broadcast news business to a turn. This is a particularly chilling entry in the ongoing Dahmer-thon that has become the serial-killer subgenre. Fortunately, there aren't as many serial killers in real-life America as there are in mystery novels.