Irresistible (Conrad Voort Novels)

Penzler Pick, June 2000: Serial killers are everywhere, but thankfully the most ingenious and uncatchable ones stick to the pages of fiction, where readers can encounter them at moments of their own choosing... and when fully prepared. Ethan Black's Irresistible posits that rarely seen creature, the female homicidal nutcase, who in this instance plies her trade amid the anonymous masses of Manhattan. Obviously, Nora Clay has some troubling secrets in her past, traumas that lead her to slice and dice what turns out to be a carefully targeted group of men. She leaves too few clues behind to enable the cops to get a fix on who she might be and why she's turning guys into lunchmeat. When the first victim is found, with the words "I KNOW YOU" printed in large black letters across his bathroom wall, NYPD sex crimes investigator Conrad Voort has little idea that this crazed killer might "know" him, too. Black, author of the equally grisly and entertaining The Broken Hearts Club, has perhaps gone a little over the top--not in his creation of the death-dealing pocket Venus, Nora Clay, but in his portrayal of Voort, a New Yorker of ancient Knickerbocker lineage who's also rich enough to tool around the city's crime scenes in a $70K Jaguar.

Among my favorite books are those like Agatha Christie's The ABC Murders, Philip MacDonald's Warrant for X, and S.S. Van Dine's The Bishop Murder Case, in which a teasing, taunting killer exhibits lethal behavior while providing notes and clues to challenge the police, all the while remaining hidden in a city's throngs. In this case, as in so many others, what looks to be utter madness has method behind it. What's even more chilling is, finally, the way the driven and camouflaged Nora Clay turns out to be as vulnerable to Voort's manipulations as she was, long ago, to the schoolboys who destroyed her. --Otto Penzler