Broken Angels is a novel guaranteed to have your knuckles turn white. With Byrne and Balzano, Richard Montanari has created two characters who make the reader live with them through each tortured step of their investigation until, at last and breathless, they uncover the truth.
When the first body is found, mutilated and strangled on the riverbank, homicide detectives Kevin Byrne and Jessica Balzano suspect yet another case of random urban violence. Until it happens again. And again. One by one, women are lured to the old Schuylkill River, their violent and increasingly staged deaths the only clues to the killer's twisted imagination. All are wearing oddly old-fashioned dresses, holding a prop of some kind. And each one seems to have a story to tell, speaking of nightmares that are not just the stuff of fairy tales ...Desperately, Byrne and Balzano try to uncover the fragile link between the murders, until they realise they are up against two different kinds of evil. A ruthless killer is preying upon the citizens of Philadelphia. And someone else is killing the suspects.
Richard Montanari? What else can be said? An excellent, or just simply a fantastic storyteller, doesn't do the guy justice. With Broken Angels, Montanari's third outing for Kevin Byrne and Jessica Balzano, he looks set to take the lists by storm ... again.
Montanari's ability to captivate through his description and dialogue sets him apart. The sound of the rivers rushing and the wind blowing are echoing in the ears long after the book has been completed, whilst the emotions of the characters are at once uplifting and downright terrifying, depending on which one you care to mention.
Reading Richard Montanari is a bit like being thrown in the air by a beloved family member when you were a child. You know full well its dangerous, but you can't help but scream "again, again ...AGAIN".
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