This is my first book by Mike Resnick and it will not be my last. His world building is phenomenal the plot is unlike any I have ever read. Which is worse a man with a compulsion to kill or one with the intention to kill? Which is more dangerous? Action packed and thought provoking.

WALPURGIS III is a beautifully accomplished and psychologically terrifying novel originally published in 1982, by outstanding science fiction author Mike Resnick. Mr. Resnick accomplishes an epic of space exploration and colonization while simultaneously critiquing culture, human nature, and studying the nature of evil and what happens when good people stand by and let evil flourish.

On the planet of Walpurgis III, originally colonised a century and a quarter ago by sects of witchcraft, Satanism, and related beliefs, life is under control, until the arrival of a planetary mass murderer who revels in evil and destruction of life. Once Conrad Bland is granted asylum (and some of the sects begin to consider him the Dark Messiah), the populace of Walpurgis III is subjected to terror, torture, murder, and wholesale destruction. Detective John Sable, a good man with a moral code of integrity, tries to warn Bland's security chief that an assassin from the Republic (the planetary federation) has been sent to Walpurgis III to assassinate Bland, whose own murder totals are in the multiple millions. Assassin Jericho seems to be a man with no moral code, a moral cipher, almost robotic in regard to his lack of emotions. But he is going against a virtual force of Nature, truly an embodiment of evil, a microcosm of the Cosmic drive to Entropy.

WALPURGIS III is a story to read, to savor, and to keep as a re-reader and a reminder of the perils to which humanity falls prey.