By Patrick Anderson,
whose e-mail address is mondaythrillers@aol.com
Monday, July 3, 2006; C10
SHADOW MAN
By Cody Mcfadyen
Bantam. 373 pp. $24
Cody Mcfadyen's "Shadow Man" is possibly the most violent thriller I've ever read -- it's clearly not for everyone -- yet I never felt its violence was gratuitous. In his story of an FBI agent's pursuit of a serial killer, Mcfadyen is trying to address the enduring conflict between good and evil. Insofar as he succeeds, it is because his heroine, Los Angeles-based Smoky Barrett, is such a powerful mixture of strength and vulnerability, courage and fear. In a strange way, Barrett's mingled roles as woman, victim and avenger make the novel as humane as it is violent.
When we meet Barrett, she is on leave from the FBI. We are introduced to her nightmares, to the fresh scars that disfigure her face and body, to her thoughts of suicide. Her psychiatrist sums up her case succinctly: "Six months ago a man you were hunting, Joseph Sands, came after you and your family, killed your husband in front of you, raped and tortured you, and killed your daughter. Through an effort that could only be called superhuman, you turned the tables on him, taking his life." Soon enough, we are given the unspeakable details of the attack.
The psychiatrist challenges Barrett to reject the lure of suicide and return to work. He produces her gun, the Glock she once used with such skill, and tells her to pick it up. Instead, she falls to the floor: "I scream, and I beat my head with my hands, and I feel myself starting to sob, and I know he's done it. He's cracked me, split me open, torn my guts out. The fact that he's done it to help me isn't any comfort, none at all, because right now everything is pain, pain, pain." Much of Barrett's story unfolds at this level of intensity.
She forces herself to return to the FBI serial-killer office she heads and is drawn into a new case. Her close friend from high school has been viciously murdered, and the killer has left a note challenging Barrett to find him. The woman's 10-year-old daughter was left tied to her mother's body and is catatonic. Barrett takes in the child, Bonnie, who a bit too neatly becomes a replacement for her own murdered daughter. The killer claims to be a descendant of Jack the Ripper. He targets not only Barrett but also her three co-workers, and he demonstrates a terrifying ability to do harm to them and their families. Even as he torments the FBI agents, he sends them videos of the murders of more women -- prostitutes, eviscerated like the original Ripper's victims.
Mcfadyen's is a landscape filled with monsters. By letter, the killer taunts Barrett about the child he has left catatonic: "How is little Bonnie? Does she scream and weep, or is she simply silent. I wonder about this from time to time. Please, tell her I said hello." He has acolytes he's recruited on the Internet. One of the book's most decent characters is not only seized by the killer but also suffers from cancer. As if this latter-day Ripper's crimes weren't enough, Mcfadyen has various police and FBI agents recall other horrors from the past. In this world, evil is passed on from one generation to the next, without end.
Even as Barrett tracks the killer, she struggles with both her fears and her new role as surrogate mother. "God, I am afraid," she says. "All the time. I wake up afraid, I walk around afraid, I go to sleep afraid." In one scene with the child, "We just stare at each other, letting the tears roll down our cheeks. That's what tears are for, after all. A way for the soul to bleed." She reflects on the challenges of motherhood: "Being a parent is not a one-note thing, a single-act play. It's complex, and it contains both love and anger, selflessness and selfishness. Times you are breathless and overwhelmed at the beauty of your child. Times you wish, just for a moment, that there was no child at all." Many readers who will be put off by the novel's violence might, if they give it a chance, find relief in the sensitivity Mcfadyen gives Barrett. Few men who write serial-killer novels have created a woman of such depth.
This first novel has weaknesses, though. For such a brilliant cop, Barrett neglects to ask some obvious questions, and for such a brilliant criminal, the Ripper neglects to eliminate the one person most likely to undo him. There are minor annoyances, too. One FBI agent, glamorous Callie, calls everyone "honey-love," and after about the hundredth time, that endearment becomes maddening. But Barrett's anger, pain and determination infuse the novel with a raw passion that -- along with its mounting suspense -- sweeps you past the weak spots. "Shadow Man" doesn't rank with the finest serial-killer novels, such as Thomas Harris's "The Silence of the Lambs" and Michael Connelly's "The Poet," but if you can handle the violence, it will be among the best crime fiction you will read this year.
