The Madman's Tale - Softcover

Katzenbach, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0345464826 ISBN 13: 9780345464828

Publisher: Fawcett Books, 2005

Synopsis

It's been twenty years since Western State Hospital was closed down and the last of its inmates reintegrated into society. Francis Petrel was barely out of his teens when his family committed him to the asylum, after his erratic behavior culminated in a terrifying outburst. Now middle-aged, he leads an aimless, solitary life housed in a cheap apartment, periodically tended to by his sisters, and perpetually medicated to quiet the chorus of voices in his head. But a reunion on the grounds of the shuttered institution stirs something deep in Francis's troubled mind: dark memories he thought he had laid to rest, about the grisly events that led to Western State Hospital's demise.

It begins in 1979, when twenty-one-year-old Petrel descends into the state-run purgatory of an overcrowded, understaffed Massachusetts mental hospital. Surrounded by inmates roaming the halls like drugged zombies and raving behind locked doors, well-meaning orderlies, jaded nurses, and patronizing doctors, Francis finds friendship with a motley assortment of fellow patients: a would-be Napoleon, a wise ex-firefighter, and a man obsessed with battling imagined devils. But there's nothing imaginary about the young nurse found sexually assaulted and brutally murdered late one night after lights-out.

The police suspect an inmate, while patients whisper about visions of a white-shrouded "angel." But the striking and mysterious prosecuting attorney who arrives to investigate has her own chilling theory--about the grim, telltale "signature" left on the victim's body, a string of unsolved sex killings, and a very real devil who, by chance or design, has come to turn a madhouse into a slaughterhouse.

Now, with the past creeping back to haunt his thoughts, and nothing but a pencil and the bare walls of his bleak apartment, Francis surrenders to the overwhelming need to tell the story of those nightmarish days. But because the crime was never solved, it's a story doomed to remain unfinished. Until, like Francis's long-buried recollections, the killer resurfaces . . . with a vengeance.

A tour de force narrative journey through the eerily unpredictable mind of an utterly unusual hero, The Madman's Tale will keep even the most astute thriller reader uncertain, unnerved, and unable to resist the tantalizing twists and turns of this fiendishly suspenseful shadow show.

About this title

Review:

"'Wonderful. This haunting story will linger in your mind long after you've left the asylum'" (Miami Herald)

"'Beautifully written, thoroughly engrossing thriller'" (Boston Globe)

"'A novel that rises to the top of the genre, a page-turner whose authenticity takes the reader on an unexpected journey'" (Denver Post)

"'A tour de force, superior storytelling designed to scare your pants off and very likely to succeed'" (Washington Post)

Book Description:

A mesmerizing classic of a thriller: AND THEN THERE WERE NONE meets ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST.

About this edition

• Publisher: Fawcett Books
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0345464826
• ISBN 13: 9780345464828
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Number of pages: 576