LIBRARY JOURNAL

Gould, Heywood. The Serial Killer’s Daughter. Nightbird. Apr. 2011. c.258p. ISBN 9780981957258. $25.

After a major hiatus (one book since 1988), novelist Gould (Fort Apache, the Bronx; Cocktail) is back with a noir thriller, full of action, dark humor, multiple killings and a swath of eccentric characters plucked from the American heartland (bungling bad guys, a lawyer of dubious sanity, and a reverend with a unique take on eternal damnation). The story involves Hannah, the daughter of an incarcerated serial killer, who fears for her life. She ensnares Peter, a hormonally charged and quip-literate English major, as protector. Since English majors are more renowned for parsing sentences than defending princesses, this is a stretch. But the unlikely hero fulfills his role with aplomb, dark humor, lethal efficiency, luck and his repertoire of weak jokes. The masterly scoop and delineation of the story has inherent cinematic fell, not suprising coming from a screenwriter and director.
VERDICT Apart from the clichéd sexual gambit, this high-caliber redemptive road trip is quick-witted, stylish, and highly entertaining.

  – Seamus Scanlon, Ctr for Worker Education, CUNY