Sheldon Rusch The Boy with Perfect Hands

The Boy with Perfect Hands

Sheldon Rusch

Berkley, Sept 2006, $23.95, 336 pp.

ISBN 042521172X

A man is found strangled in his home at the same time a woman is found murdered and posed in an outdoor arena. The pattern happens several times. Illinois State Special Agent Elizabeth Taylor Hewitt is assigned the head up the case. Her new captain is not the father figure like her previous one; in fact he is more like the evil stepfather who never lets Hewitt forget she slept with a serial killer. Elizabeth has a theory that two different people working in tandem are responsible for the series of murders.

Hewitt's first break comes when she notices that in the house of the male victims, the radio was tuned to the classical station WCLS. On the night of the last murder at 3:03 A.M. Nocturne in E. Flat by Chopin was playing. She thinks the killer got into the apartment and played the song working the victim over just as he did with the other male victims. When she goes over to the radio station, she is shocked to learn that the owner is her old high school friend Jimmy Benson. He tells her that the only disgruntled employee he knows is a radio personality he fired. When Hewitt meets that person her instincts tell her he isn't the killer and she moves the investigation into a different direction one that almost costs her and her lover their lives.

Sheldon Rusch proves he is no one hit wonder with THE BOY WITH THE PERFECT HANDS, a mystery that has luscious rich, literary poise, a likeable "everyman" heroine and a group of suspects that could all be the killers. The investigation progresses naturally from one moment to the next and makes the climax feel very right. The protagonist uses tried and true police methods as well as intuition to crack the case wide open.

Harriet Klausner