On, Off
Colleen McCullough
Simon & Schuster, Jun 2006, $25.95
ISBN 0743286421

In 1965 in Holloman, Connecticut, Chubb University Professor Robert Smith calls Police Captain Danny Marciano to inform the cop that the Hughlings Jackson Center for Neurological Research assistants have found part of a body of a woman in their dead animal refrigerator. Danny assigns his best detective, Lieutenant Carmine Delmonico to lead the investigation at Hughlings Jackson Center affectionately known by the research staff as the Hug. Having just come off of solving a domestic double homicide, Carmine knows he will miss breakfast unlike his two Sergeants, Corey Marshall and Abe Goldberg since they ate already.

Carmine, Corey, and Abe head to the Hug to meticulously search for clues left behind by an apparently vicious killer, but find little evidence left behind by the clever culprit. As the cops keep digging, Carmine learns of other recent victims of mixed racial females by a rapist-killer who severs the heads of his victims probably as some form of a trophy. As he dubs his target as being the "Ghost" because he leaves nothing remotely identifying who he is, the media goes on "the Connecticut Monster" frenzy.

ON, OFF is always on target as a terrific 1960s police procedural that showcases an investigation into a serial killer at a time when the forensic information database age was at best in diapers. The background, for instance the outage in the Black communities over the profile of the targets adds a sense of the era. Carmine is a fabulous lead character struggling with an impossible case that he begins to believe has historical roots while the killer seems frighteningly real and particularly vicious. Colleen McCullough provides a superb historical serial killer thriller.

Harriet Klausner