(I received a free copy of this book from Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.)

In a desolate part of Brooklyn, a retired history professor plots mass murder
The withered old man speaks into a tape recorder. This is not a confession, he explains, but a presentation. He is Charles Witter Kirwan, a former academic who has lived his whole life in the same house and watched his childhood neighborhood turn from white to black. Now, stricken with terminal cancer, Kirwan has decided to fight back against his neighbors. His may be the ravings of a lunatic racist, but the dynamite in his basement is real. He is going to blow up the apartment building next door—and take some sixty African Americans with it.
Private investigator John Milano is on the trail of a stolen painting when he catches wind of Kirwan’s mad plan. He has forty-eight hours to stop the bombing, and to keep those innocents from following this twisted, hateful man into death.

This book was first published in 1983 - and you can tell. Not to say that that is necessarily a bad thing, but you can instantly spot the different styles (not to mention fashion accessories!) from a period not so long agao - but long enough to stand out to even the casual reader.

The story was okay, in a looking-back-in-time kinda thing. Compared to a lot of thriller authors today, this book does lack some polish and consistency but, having said that, I think there were some elements to this tale that would work just as well now as it must have done back in the Eighties.

The character of Charles Kirwan is by far the standout in this story - he is creepy and his incessant ramblings filled me with some real dislike for him, even knowing full well that he is fictional. I also liked Christine - she was well-drawn (especially for an elderly white guy as Ellin was when he wrote this) and really added some real class to the cast. That side of this story really worked for me. However, the run-of-the-mill P.I. Milano was just so uninteresting that I really found myself ignoring him. And his relationship with Christine was just a little uncomfortable for me.

All in all, a decent enough story but lacking a little bit of today's polish...


Paul
ARH