The Anniversary Man: A Thriller

Book Description

Twenty years ago, John Costello's life as he knew it ended. He and his beautiful girlfriend, Nadia, became victims of the deranged "Hammer of God" killer who terrorized Jersey City throughout the summer of 1984. This murderer went after young courting couples in an attempt to "save their souls." Nadia was killed by the first blow of the hammer. John survived, but was physically and psychologically scarred to an extent that few people could comprehend. He withdrew from society, hid in his apartment, and now only emerges to work as a crime researcher for a major newspaper.

Damaged as he may be, no one in New Jersey knows more about serial killers than John Costello. So, when a new spate of murders starts--all seemingly random and unrelated--John is the only one who can discern the complex pattern that lies behind them. But could this dark knowledge threaten his own life?

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly This disappointing crime thriller from Ellory (A Quiet Belief in Angels) focuses on a serial killer who restages famous murders with new victims across New York City. As the surprisingly ineffectual NYPD struggles to track down the Anniversary Killer, Det. Ray Irving finds himself unexpectedly allied with the enigmatic and reclusive John Costello, lone survivor of a previous serial killer's rampage and perhaps New York's foremost authority on serial killers. While the fiend strikes again and again, Ray is forced to depend on the fragile John, despite the personal cost to John as well as Ray's growing concerns about John's reliability. Ellory's operatic story, for all its entertaining purple-tinged prose and forays into the lurid underbelly of serial-killer fandom, brings little new to this familiar subgenre. His decaying New York as a place of unrelenting despair and violence will strike many as far more suited to the 1970s than to the present. (June) Copyright ® Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist *Starred Review* This is one of those police-procedural gems that come along once in a blue moon. The book is entirely free of the tired formulas that drive way too many procedurals and that often seem more oriented toward securing movie rights than telling a story. And what a story this is! NYPD Detective Ray Irving--overworked, underpaid, and absolutely dedicated to his job--risks his code of ethics and, ultimately, his life to track down a serial killer who is imitating the crimes of some of the worst monsters our society has spawned. An increasing number of leads begin flowing in from newspaper researcher John Costello, a psychologically damaged survivor of the "Hammer of God" killer. Two decades after that traumatic event, Costello now seems to have garnered an uncannily encyclopedic knowledge of serial murderers. Costello's almost prescient information soon makes him Irving's number-one resource as well as his number-one suspect. Although Ellory is widely acclaimed in his native Britain, his books have not yet received widespread distribution in the U.S. Following A Quiet Belief in Angels (2009), this could be the one to put his name in lights in this country. Expect his name to be on every crime-fiction fan's lips in short order. --Elliott Swanson --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.