Thomas Altman - Black Christmas

[dem bones]

Thomas Altman - Black Christmas (Corgi, 1984)

Blurb:

SOMEONE HAS A SPECIAL GIFT FOR THE YOUNG WOMEN OF MURDOCK.


Christmas in Murdock. A time of cosy safety, snowy sidewalks, and carolling children. But this holiday season, someone is baiting Sheriff Dunsmore in a bizarre and deadly game.
Someone is stalking the young women he knows and loves . . . seducing them with icy steel . . . leaving them for him to find — far too late.
It's the night before Christmas. The frightened town edges toward panic. And Dunsmore is about to receive the most terrifying gift of all . . .

Not to be confused with the 1974 slasher of same name, though both share a similar theme. Killing attractive young women.
December 23rd in Murdock, a quiet, rural New York community, pop. c.5000. Sheriff Bud Dunsmore has it cushy. There's not been a murder here in twenty-five years, and even that one involved two out-of-townees. But all that is about to change with with the discovery of a butchered corpse in Kelly's Wood. Jenny Powers, 17, and pregnant, had set out in the snow to meet erstwhile boyfriend, Rick Lerner, who has inexplicably dumped her by post. As Jenny waits at the designated trysting place, a figure steps from the trees and hacks at her with an axe. Thirteen blows, the killer continuing the frenzied assault well after the girl is dead.

Dunsmore sat down on the fallen log. He'd never liked Kelly's Wood in any season. It had all the ambience of a haunted house. Now it had the charisma of an abattoir.

Bud's marriage to Eleanor long withered away and died. His profession provides the perfect excuse from keeping him away from home as much as possible. His string of discreet affairs keep him sane. Of course, the busy-bodies make it their business to ensure whispers of his serial infidelities reach Eleanor. Bud is currently getting up close and personal with twenty-year-old Alice Hamilton, only this time it's love. Bud feels kind of guilty that his lover is only a year or so older than his daughter, Nancy, the apple of his eye. But not that guilty.

Alice has a restraining order against husband Dan, a violent, possessive monster with a glass eye. Word has reached him of his estranged wife's affair, so what better excuse to return to Murdock and ruin her holiday? Best of all, it was Dunsmore pressed wife-beating charges against him which saw Hamilton spend three miserable months behind bars. Revenge will be so sweet!

Frank 'Slick' Tucker runs the local coffee shop. A former boxer of some fame, his career hit the skids back in '59 after a fluky defeat to that bastard Kid Bayou in a title fight at Madison Square Garden. Slick crawled inside the bottle for decades, finally beginning his business once he cleaned up. Slick's leching after young women once landed him in trouble with the law, and it's struggle indeed to keep his hands off his tight-assed waitress, Maryjo Kosac. He'll be OK just as lays off the scotch.

Frank notes the lock has been forced on his storage shed. He pushes open the door to catch Billy Cote, the official town cretin, depositing a blood-stained axe. What's the profoundly retarded lad been up to?

To appease Mayor James 'The Greek' Kontakis, Bud takes young Rick Lerner into custody. His deputy, Carl Maxwell, is insistent that Lerner is their killer, but then Carl and Rick have a longstanding dislike for one another. Bud knows the boy didn't do it, but Carl ain't making things any easier on himself with his stubborn refusal to give an account of his whereabouts. What is he hiding?

Someone sneaks into the Sheriff's office and slashes the Miss August poster. Thirteen times. It's no coincidence. A note on Dunsmore's desk reads:

Thirteen Strokes and I don't stop at one.

They don't, either.

TBC

[dem bones]

280 pages that fly by like 140, or did for me. This is my kind of 'spot the psycho' - pacy, nasty, every main player falling under suspicion. So it's tempting to rule out cycloptic wife-beater Dan Hamilton as too obvious a candidate -he might as well be carrying an 'It's me!' placard - but would that be playing into his bloody hands? Billy is busy being all mute and feeble-witted in the woods: would Ma Cote be prepared to cover up a crime or several on his behalf? Could even be that she has a down on fancy pretty pieces who have everything so easy these days? Meanwhile 'Slick' is back on the booze and lusting something indecent. How about the troubled adulterer leading the police investigation? Has guilt driven Dunsmore out of his brain? Like I'm gonna tell you.

Text littered with eclectic mix of Pop culture references including Conway Twitty, Liberace, Count Chockula, the Dressed To Kill novelisation (author: Thomas Altman), James Taylor, Jimmy Carson, Maxwell House, a large poster based on the Dune paperback cover.

Greatly enjoyed this one. Am now tempted to give his The True Bride a go.