The Psalm Killer (Hardcover)

Amazon.com Review
Belfast-based police officer Cross, in Dublin for a conference, turns down a lift to the train station; a young cop insists on walking with him. "Cross enjoyed the walk in the pale sunlight with its hint of spring, though he would have preferred it alone, to savour the rare occasion of being able to feel entirely safe. In Belfast part of him was always alert to the possibility of sudden danger, the peripheral moment of warning, the car drawing alongside or the hot blast of air that preceded the explosion ..." When a thriller so quickly and so eloquently sums up the difference between life in Northern and Southern Ireland, you know you're on to something special, and Petit doesn't disappoint. Cross--English and Catholic--has come to head the murder squad in Belfast because his wife wants to be near her parents. He finds that some of the crimes he's investigating are linked to more than just the sectarian violence of the day--and to a truly devilish killer called Candlestick who you'll remember long after the last page.

From 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 man?smashed beyond recognition but found to have been already dead?leads 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 novel?it's hard to keep track of the characters, and only Cross seems really knowable?but it does make one think.?Marylaine Block, St. Ambrose Univ. Lib., Davenport, Ia.
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