THE STRANGLER
By William Landay
Delacourt Press, a Division of Random House, Inc. New York, New York
$24.00, hardcover, 390 pages; ISBN 978-0-385-33615-4 (2007).
I was really looking forward to this book since I’d previously read and enjoyed this author’s first novel, Mission Flats. That book won Landay, a former Massachusetts prosecutor, the Creasey Memorial Dagger for Best First Crime Novel. Unfortunately, Landay’s second novel fails to deliver the same impact.
The Strangler is a novel about three Irish brothers living in Boston in 1963; Joe Daley – the eldest – is a tough cop who gambles too much and ends up working off his debts by helping the mob. Soon, everything he holds dear is threatened. Michael, the middle son, is a lawyer who works in the Attorney General’s Office. He toils away in the obscure Eminent Domain Division but is soon transferred to the Boston Strangler Task Force. Ricky is a thief who suffers the most when the Strangler comes calling on his girlfriend.
The novel weaves the story of these three brothers, their deceased father (a cop killed under questionable circumstances), their mother (who may be sleeping with her former husband’s murderer), family secrets, a mob war and two people who may be the Boston Strangler. If it sounds like a lot, it is – too much it seems for the author who seems to lose focus on the important aspects of the novel.
The three brothers are so different that the first thing you wonder is how they can possibly be related. Their treatment is also uneven – Joe, arguably the least likeable, is given the greatest emphasis. I would have enjoyed a more thorough handling of the most colorful brother, Ricky.
Even the Boston Strangler is given short shrift. Albert DeSalvo confesses to being the Strangler but the police – or at least Michael – isn’t so sure that DeSalvo is the killer. For someone unfamiliar with all the details of the murders, the various inconsistencies that point to why DeSalvo may not have been the Boston Strangler are never flushed out in the book. Despite the title of the book, the Boston Strangler is a bit player in this novel.
In short, this rambling novel lacked the focus and intensity of Landay’s earlier work.
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