Overview
It is 1985: Detective Chief Inspector Cross of Belfast's Royal Ulster Constabulary is wondering, again, if he should leave the force. He's been there for twelve years, but he's a more adept loner than he is a careerist. He's British and Catholic, neither of which earns him the trust of his Irish-Protestant colleagues, or the civilian contacts essential to his job. And how effective can any officer of the law be in a country grown inured to the facts and effects of decades of violent hostilities? Still, Cross is unfailingly compelled by murder - the violence almost dazzling in its stark contrast to the "bloodlessness of his own existence," the who and why behind a crime an undeniable driving force in him. Especially at this moment: in a city "where a death was easier to arrange than crossing the road," DCI Cross has spotted the gruesome handiwork of a serial killer. It might be that Cross has simply stumbled on someone else who's made sectarian violence a vocation, but this killer is cutting across political and religious lines - and with a viciousness reminiscent of a particularly grisly episode in the recent, tortuous history of the city. Cross has to fight his superiors to be allowed to focus attention where he thinks it's necessary, and even when they agree, they handicap him (or so they think) by assigning a young policewoman to the case. But WPC Westerby is a recent transfer from the sex abuse unit, so there isn't much she hasn't seen; and her keenness, intelligence and ambition make her quickly indispensable to Cross. Because as they close in on the killer, he seems to retreat further and further behind a layered identity and motive. As they uncover more and more about him, they uncover, as well, more and more of the maze of secret, paranoid alliances, backroom deals and sanctioned treachery hidden just below the surface of the conflict. And even as the situation is growing increasingly clear to them, they are being drawn, perhaps inextricably, into a nigA novel of bristling power--equal parts political thriller, murder mystery, and psychological drama--The Psalm Killer plunges readers into the terrifying heart of the crisis in Northern Ireland. As Detective Chief Inspector Cross searches for a killer stalking the streets of Belfast, he uncovers the insidious, cynical political realities hidden just below the surface of the conflict going on in the city. 432 pp. Author tour. Print ads. 75,000 print.
Editorials
From Barnes & Noble
A moody, intricate thriller played out against the complex politics and history of Northern Ireland. Imagine John le Carre turning his attention to the Troubles and a troubled police detective, and you get some idea of the novel's sophistication and intelligence as Petit cuts back and forth between the investigation into a series of murders and scenes involving the killer, who calls himself Candlestick.—Nancy Pate
Publishers Weekly -
The madness that has beset Northern Ireland for decades provides the backdrop for this gripping tale of political conspiracy and serial murder set in Belfast. At the heart of the book's considerable darkness is a ruthless professional killer codenamed "Candlestick." Ostensibly a deserter from the British army, Candlestick worked in the early 1970s for a Protestant paramilitary leader, an I.R.A. leader and two warring factions of British intelligence-occasionally for more than one at the same time. Petit (Robinson) interposes flashbacks of Candlestick's story with the 1985 investigation of police inspector Cross, another Briton in Belfast, who's struggling to make sense of a series of tenuously connected murders. As the two stories converge, layers of conspiracy emerge, revealing an intricate tangle of cover-ups, convoluted motives and odd political bedfellows. Petit stumbles into some clichés, most troublingly in forays into the psychology of a killer and the gratuitous romance between Cross and a female detective. Also, some forced surprises are grafted onto the ending. But a knack for suspenseful plotting and a gritty evocation of Belfast and its intersecting underworlds make for a hard-hitting political thriller. Petit's look at subversive tactics and unexpected alliances are on the bead, and few readers will forget his villain, the cruel, horrifying Candlestick.Publishers Weekly -
The madness that has beset Northern Ireland for decades provides the backdrop for this gripping tale of political conspiracy and serial murder set in Belfast. At the heart of the book's considerable darkness is a ruthless professional killer codenamed "Candlestick." Ostensibly a deserter from the British army, Candlestick worked in the early 1970s for a Protestant paramilitary leader, an I.R.A. leader and two warring factions of British intelligenceoccasionally for more than one at the same time. Petit (Robinson) interposes flashbacks of Candlestick's story with the 1985 investigation of police inspector Cross, another Briton in Belfast, who's struggling to make sense of a series of tenuously connected murders. As the two stories converge, layers of conspiracy emerge, revealing an intricate tangle of cover-ups, convoluted motives and odd political bedfellows. Petit stumbles into some clichs, most troublingly in forays into the psychology of a killer and the gratuitous romance between Cross and a female detective. Also, some forced surprises are grafted onto the ending. But a knack for suspenseful plotting and a gritty evocation of Belfast and its intersecting underworlds make for a hard-hitting political thriller. Petit's look at subversive tactics and unexpected alliances are on the bead, and few readers will forget his villain, the cruel, horrifying Candlestick. (Apr.)Library Journal
This is a novel of brutal, gory serial murder set amid the sectarian violence of northern Ireland. Cross, a Catholic British man married to a Protestant Irish woman, is an inspector investigating homicide cases. The hit-and-run death of a mansmashed beyond recognition but found to have been already deadleads Cross into a world of religious hatred and fanaticism, of both IRA and Protestant terrorism. Set in 1985, the novel, often switches back in time to 1972, where we see a young man developing the knowledge that he was born to be a hired killer. The moral landscape is full of deception and treachery, and just when you think you know what somebody stands for, you find it's all a lie. Readers will find this a challenging novelit's hard to keep track of the characters, and only Cross seems really knowablebut it does make one think.Marylaine Block, St. Ambrose Univ. Lib., Davenport, Ia.Kirkus Reviews
Hideously gruesome, malignantly atmospheric by-the-numbers serial killer tale, a more focused, if more predictable, second thriller from Petit (Robinson, 1994).It's 1985 in Northern Ireland, and Royal Ulster Constabulary Detective Inspector Cross is as burned-out as the bombed-out Belfast that surrounds him. Cross, a working-class English Catholic who was transferred to Belfast at the request of his politically connected Irish Protestant wife Deirdre, has just about had it when his wife announces that she is having an affair. Meanwhile, Cross finds solace in the analytical study of crime scenes, like that of a frozen, toothless male corpse that two joyriding teenagers discover along a highway. The corpse shows signs of torture, and, to complicate matters, Cross finds his investigation getting unwarranted attention from sleazy British counterintelligence agents. A scrap of paper planted in the corpse's pants pocket refers to a biblical passage and, even before the next in a series of horribly mutilated victims turns up, Cross is on the trail of a religiously inspired homicidal maniac called Candlestick (a prologue shows Candlestick initiated into his grisly specialty by a woman who finds murder erotic). Petit's Belfast is a petri dish of perversion, mayhem, and moral depravity, so it's no surprise when Cross discovers that Candlestick's talents just might have been useful to his superiors in the past. He also finds time for a brief fling with his young, tough-but-beautiful assistant, Wendy. When Candlestick kidnaps one of Cross's children to force a confrontation, Wendy cleverly disrobes, distracting the killer so that Cross can win the battle but, in an ironic twist, lose the war against the satanic political types who see Candlestick as part of a larger, drearier game.
Relentlessly depressing rewrite of a rainy-day le Carré spy story. The author includes an annotated bibliography to support his claim that some of his formulaic tale is true.