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DEVIANT WAYS
A master killing calling himself the Sandman is out for revenge. He's slaughtering not just one person at a time but whole families and whole neighborhoods, unleashing devastating explosions nationwide, and watching the horror unfold on a sophisticated network of surveillance cameras. No one knows why he is committing his crimes, or where he'll strike next. But one man—Jack Casey—knows this: the Sandman wants him in the middle of the case, and wants him to suffer... Jack was the FBI's top profiler until a psychopath's unspeakable crime shattered his life. Now Jack is starting over as a detective in a posh shoreline community outside Boston, and involved with a beautiful woman who knows nothing about his shocking past. But the Sandman has found him, and his cutting-edge electronics devices are silently monitoring Jack's every move. Knowing that a showdown is imminent, Jack turns in desperation to Malcolm Fletcher, a strange and brilliant fallen angel from the profiling unit. Fletcher is wanted by the FBI. And his possesses the key to unlocking the Sandman's demented mind. As Jack Casey confronts evidence that the evil he's fighting may have emanated from his own side of the law, the Sandman's motivations begin to appear and a wild chase ensues. But while racing against time to save the next family, Jack is led deeper into the dark and terrifying tunnels of his own fragile mind—a place where the Sandman awaits, to deal his final master stroke of vindictive cruelty.  Read an excerpt
BUY THE BOOK A US publication date hasn't been set yet. US readers can order easily from the Amazon.co.uk link below (shipping is very reasonable!). Amazon UK
Atria US hardcover Oct 2000 ISBN 9780671040598 Pocket Star US mass-market paperback Oct 2001 ISBN 9780671040604 Recorded Books Audio Cassette (unabridged) Oct 2001 ISBN 0788759884 Pocket Books paperback Spring 2011 ISBN-13: 978-1849833516
INSPIRATION I was taking a rather dull English course in college, one of those requirement courses that you need to check off in order to graduate. I don't remember the name of the course, but I do remember that the instructor had a monotone voice—a natural sedative that put half the class to sleep—and that while he was droning on and about Le Morte de'Arthur (the Death of King Arthur), my imagination started kicking around this idea of a man with disturbing, penetrating black eyes that formed one big black pupil. And he didn't so much look at you as look through you, and he had this ability to, just through his powers of observation, figure out what made you tick. This person was named Malcolm Fletcher, and during my writing classes at the University of New Hampshire, I tried to bring him to life. Either I wasn't very good at doing my job (partially true), or the writing professors weren't interested in reading a story about a former FBI profiler with a frightening past, instead wanting more short stories about angst-filled, whining characters searching for meaning in their meaningless lives (probably true). So Malcolm Fletcher disappeared for a while I wrote story stories about people becoming bean farmers, or something. I do remember one short story from that time, a story about a prostitute called "Air and Angles." My professor hated it, and while I'm sure there was a measured certain pretentiousness to it, the story did go on to win the yearly fiction contest for the campus magazine. During my last year of graduate school, Fletcher came back to me one day while I was out drinking with friends, only this time he brought words: "I have such worlds to show you." Yes, I did have a good buzz going, and yes, just about everything you say or thing sounds great when you've had a few. But the words struck a chord, especially when I started playing around with an idea I had: a serial killer known as The Sandman who was not only killing families in a grisly fashion and letting one survive, but leaving bombs, wanting to kill the police. The Sandman had an axe to grind, you see, especially with the FBI—and later, with Jack Casey, another former profiler with a disturbing history that equaled that of Malcolm Fletcher.
REVIEWS "Move over, Hannibal Lecter. The Sandman is coming, and he's going to knock you off your perch as the world's creepiest and smartest serial killer. Chris Mooney's nail-biting, scarifying debut thriller features a fully drawn protagonist in former FBI profiler Jack Casey, whose life was shattered when another madman killed his pregnant wife before his eyes. Now Jack's a local cop on a small-town beat in Marblehead, Massachusetts, rebuilding his life with the help of a beautiful woman and a community of caring friends. But when a psychopath who seems to know everything about Jack's past as well as his present starts torturing and killing entire families in the quiet Boston suburb and then trapping his pursuers by blowing them up at the scene, Casey begins to wonder where the man the media dubbed the Sandman is getting his inside information. Is there a conspiracy at the highest levels of federal intelligence to cover up a behavioral experiment gone wrong? What's the connection between an unsolved arson at a Massachusetts home for troubled boys and the Sandman's choice of victims? And where does another ex-profiler fit in? He seems to know as much as the Sandman and offers Jack his help in solving the awful crimes. The most important question may be whether Anthony Hopkins is available for another leading role as a psychopath. But don't wait for the inevitable big-screen treatment. Grab this bloody, violent, and mesmerizing study of psychological terror and the redemptive power of love before they call the casting director. Just don't read it on a stormy night when you're home alone." —Amazon.com "The familiar device of revenge killing is given horrific new twists in this gripping debut, as Mooney propels the reader into breathless suspense. The action kicks off with a literal bang [and] along the way Casey joins forces with the dark and fascinating Malcolm Fletcher, a renegade from the profiling department given to quoting Oscar Wilde, reading Le Morte d'Arthur in French and delivering the odd wisecrack ("I've seen your efforts. A high school freshman trying to unclasp a bra has a more polished approach"). Fascinating, too, is the novel's villain, the self-proclaimed Sandman, whose fiendish use of up-to-the-minute technology, for both surveillance and destruction, lends the novel some of its most distinctive details. Mooney's cinematic eye, unerring ear for vivid dialogue and deft touches of humanity—often interjected in moving counterpoint to the plot's malevolence—combine to turn this novel...into a rousing read." —Publishers Weekly "Mooney's novel is a violent, action-filled tale, but it rises above many run-of-the-mill serial-killer thrillers because all the high-blown action always has a personal consequence and because the characters are sufficiently defined to make us care what happens to them. Recommend this one to readers of Thomas Harris and Jeffrey Deaver." —Booklist  |
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