The Prettiest Feathers

By Patricia Sierra and John Philpin

Book Overview

Sarah Sinclair was the perfect victim--she wanted to die.

When a darkly enigmatic man approaches her in the small antiquarian book store where she works, Sarah is drawn into a slow dance toward death. A death she couldn't stop even if she wanted to. She is stalked, yet blindly charmed. And when he kills her, seductively, silently, she smiles.

Sarah's ex-husband, police officer Robert Sinclair, is the first to find her body and he calls it in to the one officer who will understand: his ex-mistress Detective Lane Frank. As Lane struggles to follow the increasingly elusive trail of clues, another macabre trail emerges--of bodies, coldly, tauntingly abandoned.

As the FBI becomes involved, Lane must fight to retain her hold on the case and her grip on Robert Sinclair, whose grief sinks him further into an alcoholic haze of despair and desperation. As a calculating last resort, Lane calls on the one man who can help her stop the killing, a forensic psychiatrist who had stepped too close to the edge, crawled too deeply into the mind of evil. She calls a profiler who has dropped out of society, living simply in a cabin in the woods far away from the madness that called to him, threatened him. Lane calls her father.

As they work together, Lane and her father slowly craft an image of a killer so brilliant he has murdered perhaps hundreds and never been caught, so cold that he cannot relinquish his power. With a tortuous trail of names and faces, the killer has insulated himself from those who would repress him and his need to kill, a need rooted in a disturbing, horrifying childhood.

And as Lane and her father grow closer to finding the killer, the game becomes personal between two men on opposing sides of evil, men on the edge of an abyss of madness, from which there is only one escape--death.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0553762443
• ISBN13: 9780553762440
• Release Date: March 1997
• Publisher: Bantam
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.6" x 8.7"

Customer Reviews

Truly original

The more I read of Phipin, the more I enjoy. I was sceptical at first with "The Prettiest Feathers" for the simple fact that it was written by two different authors, but I am so pleased that I did read it. This book jumps from different naratives in each chapter which are aptly named for each character. It is well written and is has a wonderful story line. I highly recommend this read to anyone reading this right now. Pick this up, you wont be disappointed, or at least I wasnt.

Amazing! Unparalelled!

The authors have used a first-person format in a way that I have never seen before. Not only do we hear the killer's thoughts, we hear the victim's thoughts. We know their lives. Terrifying. Then it's down to the eager killer, and the tired shrink. These people are human and so real. Lane Frank is my hero!

the ulimate psychological profile of a serial killer

From the very first page, Prettiest Feathers is an eminently readable book. The smooth prose is comfortable to read. John Philpin speaks directly to the reader using the unusual device of first person narrative from the deviously brilliant mind of a serial killer, John Wolf. Building a complex scenario of seduction and murder, the reader is guided through the maze of deception by a master of murder and impersonation. I found the author's use of cultural and counterculture references a secondary pleasure to identify and interpret. Probably revealing my age, I will say I felt a twinge of pride having recognized most of what Philpin is alluding to. The music of Julian Cope escaped my knowledge, prompting me to delve into some pretty weird stuff to discover what John Wolf was really listening to. Prettiest Feathers contains enough mental challenges for even the most discerning intellectual. It is also possible to read the story just for the marvelous plot twists and turns. The ending reads like the climax of a motion picture. The pace quickens and excitement mounts. I was left breathless at the conclusion to what seems the final act of a killer seeking acknowledgment of his successful career from his able nemesis. But, is it really over?

A terrifying trip inside the mind of a killer.

There are hundreds of books about serial killers. What makes this book unique is that John Wolf speaks to you, invades your dreams, is so real that you expect him to knock on your back door. You know how he thinks, and why he kills, but you never know what he'll do next. A sequel is do out next month. I can't wait.