Killer's N.O. setting, fast-paced plot grab reader

A KILLER LIKE ME By Chuck Hustmyre Dorchester Publishing, $14 softcover

A KILLER LIKE ME

By Chuck Hustmyre

Dorchester Publishing, $14 softcover

A serial killer is terrorizing New Orleans. No one has really noticed it yet because his victims are all prostitutes, but NOPD Det. Sean Murphy knows it, feels it in his bones, and he wants to catch the killer. On a hot July afternoon, standing over yet another murdered prostitute in the Katrina wreckage of a one-time club on North Rampart Street, Murphy reaches the breaking point. He knows what he needs: a task force dedicated to catching the serial killer.

Murphy’s partner, Juan Gaudet, warns him away from that notion, he believes there will never be a task force, and not because there are no funds for it. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s about that too, but it’s also about not wanting to look bad. Think about what happened in Baton Rouge,” Gaudet tells Murphy.

“Derrick Todd Lee?” Murphy instantly asks, and Gaudet nods.

“The police up there put together a high-profile task force that put out the wrong suspect and vehicle descriptions. Then the cops wasted months swabbing DNA from a couple thousand white guys driving pickup trucks,” Gaudet says.

“And the killer turned out to be a brother driving a rice burner.”

Hustmyre is very good at constructing these terse exchanges in the clipped slang cops speak. He should be, he’s a former cop himself (ATF agent for the federal government). He’s also a Baton Rouge resident, so he knows about the Lee case and doesn’t mind rubbing a little salt into an old wound. Hustmyre has worked at The Advocate, and knows the ins and outs of journalism as well, and that’s why the scenes in the Times Picayune news meetings ring true. Most of the story is told in the alternating voices of Murphy and the killer, who calls himself “Lamb of God.” As readers get to know the whacked out killer, they find out that he is a low-level clerk who still lives in an apartment attached to his mother’s house. The killer is part skewered moralist and part mommy’s boy, but when he assumes his persona as Lamb of God, he is all homicidal maniac.

Murphy understands the killer on a gut level. After all, he has an overbearing mother of his own. He is just as judgmental in his own way as Lamb of God is. So when his task force request is shot down, he turns to his ex-girlfriend, Kirsten, a reporter at the Times Picayune.

He figures she’s forgiven him for having sex with her best friend nearly a year ago, even though she kicked him out of her house afterwards. He hasn’t seen her since, but he knows how reporters are and dangles the big scoop of the serial killer story in front of her. She can’t resist. The police brass deny the story and Kirsten — woman scorned — uses Murphy’s name in the story, so he is in deep trouble. The Lamb of God, meanwhile, is furious that his excellent gory handiwork is being denied, so he plans more and bigger murders and he writes a warning letter to the paper.

When the Lamb of God begins preying on targets who are not prostitutes — “We call them true victims, people who don’t do things that are likely to get them killed, regular tax-paying citizens,” Murphy tells Kirsten — the death toll rises quickly and the city panics. Murphy gets his task force. Will he catch the Lamb of God?

Hustmyre works some obvious clichés: the Irish cop with a drinking problem, New Orleans threatened by a hurricane, crooked cops on the take, religious fanatics, French Quarter hedonists. None of these mar the story significantly. The torrid, page-turning pace of the plot grips the reader and pushes him past such minor bumps in the road.

Maybe because Hustmyre has so much experience in law enforcement, his settings and situations ring true. Being a cop doesn’t teach you how to create a character who is layered and filled with contradictory emotions, however, and Murphy is that. That takes talent, and Hustmyre has that.

There’s a lot of blood in this book. It’s about a serial killer, so you can expect some graphic gore. Many of the characters are cops or prostitutes, so they don’t speak Sunday School language. Hustmyre’s characters sound natural, comfortable in their speech patterns. Yet the only place you’ll find nonstandard grammar and language in this book is when it’s coming out of a character’s mouth.

Hustmyre is a sound writer, and he has written an adult’s book, not pornographic, but full of strong images and satisfying twists. The book is not without flaws, but a lack of action is not among them. It’s a quick yet compelling read full of tension beginning to end, and it will appeal to an audience beyond just thriller fans and crime story devotees.