Dead Game
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
Framed for murder, NYPD detective Ben Tolliver confronts a brilliant serial killer
Razek gets into Jan’s apartment by pretending to deliver flowers. Once she opens the door, the game is already over. He pushes his way in, pistol in hand, and tells her that he has not come to rape her; he just wants to make love. At gunpoint, she makes drinks, puts on music, and finally disrobes as Razek fights to ignore the voice in his head that tells him to kill her. Of course, the voice always wins in the end.
Before he leaves, Razek plants evidence around the apartment implicating NYPD detective Ben Tolliver. Razek is a game player, and he thinks it would be fun to frame a cop for murder. To keep himself out of jail and avenge the murdered woman, Tolliver will have to learn to beat a madman at his own game.
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Imagine a cop who leaves his fingerprints on a beer bottle in the home of a murder suspect. Imagine a psychotic killer who likes to play checkers, using severed and tanned parts of his victims as the pieces, and you get some idea of why this fifth book about NYPD Lt. Ben Tolliver (Mental Case, etc.) is hard to like. Harvey asks us to believe that a vicious serial killer who holds conversations and plays games with a "the thing in his head" also has the skills needed to make a fortune in precious metals. The book comes down so hard on the psychiatric community for its efforts to rehabilitate sex criminals that even diehard supporters of capital punishment may wince. The humiliation and mutilation of several female victims are detailed will little sensitivity. And there's no mystery. From the get-go, readers know that the psycho killer is Edward Razek, and it doesn't take much to figure out that the ludicrous "game" he sets in motion is an attempt to get back at Tolliver, the cop who sent him to prison, by framing him for two killings. When the media and most of Tolliver's superiors fit him in the frame, there's no suspense because readers know not only that Tolliver didn't do it but also that Razek did. The best that can be said for his effort is that Harvey's pacing is quick. Otherwise, this game's no fun.
