Butcher of Dreams
by Kay Williams & Eileen Wyman
Published by Calliope Press
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Reviewed by Maria Elmvang
Lee Fairchild has realized ever actor’s dream: a theatre of her own. Unfortunately she quickly discovers that having a theatre of her own is not all it’s cracked up to be. Instead of being able to focus solely on her acting, she now has to be in charge of all the administrative work, worry about finances, and sweet-talk actors and directors who are intent on getting on each others’ nerves.
Lee starts to get into troubles when a dead homeless person is found in the theatre. At first they think he just crawled in there to get out of the cold and accidentally OD’ed, but when they discover that somebody cut off one of his fingers, and that money is missing from the theatre office, foul work is suspected. Things go from bad to worse when more murders and attempted murders take place at the theatre–and they become more and more ritualistic in nature. Is it a satanistic cult that’s at large? Or just one really deranged individual?
I often found myself yelling at the characters, because what they ought to do and what they actually did do were two very different things, and you never knew where you had them. Just as I thought I’d gotten them figured out, they’d turn and show a completely different side of themselves.
Butcher of Dreams is a believable whodunit with lots of interesting characters. Even though I’d guessed the culprit almost from the very beginning, the authors did a good job of making me second-guess myself as conflicting pieces of evidence rose to the surface, and you end up suspecting just about everybody. A daring attempt, as it often seems overdone, but here it works.
The writing could have been sharper, something that’s often the case in a co-authored book, as these usually need a firmer editor, but that didn’t stop me from being caught up in the plot and chilled by how it unfolded. A very disturbing read indeed.
Armchair Interviews says: If ”disturbing” reads are your cup of tea, check this out.