Colin Campbell (12) (1955–)

Vince McNulty is a man with no other purpose than to patronize massage parlors and reminisce about the days when he was an undercover policeman.

Rather than participating in raids on such places he now finds a kind of solace and escape in the final act, all the while allowing himself to blur fantasy and reality into a somewhat wakeful dream. The act ends too soon, and he finds himself once more roaming and seeking another diversion.

Kicked off the police force due to politics and a hot temper, Vince hasn't quite come to terms with unemployment. Through a series of flashbacks that portray his short-fused anger, we watch as Vince all but goes through the motions of living until he becomes a murder suspect, tied in with the same massage parlors he has been frequenting.

For a short while there is a fairly solid case building against him and he soon finds himself dodging not only the police but the real killer. Through a series of harrowing near-misses on his own life, Vince turns the tables and becomes the hunter leading to an explosive ending.

I was a little put off at first at the seemingly slow pace of the book, until I realized that I wasn't rereading passages, but catching glimpses of an ever enlarging flashback that haunts Vince. I'm glad I stuck with the book because once the bodies began to pile up, the action took a rollercoaster pause at the top of the track before edging downwards into a dizzying spiral of events.

Colin gives us real people with larger than life expectations. You feel their struggle to meld into a society that requires people to fit into ready made molds, and yet living in a gritty, dark and sometimes grisly world where rules are made to be broken. Definitely not for the faint of heart as there are some graphic scenes involved.

I only wish it wasn't so difficult to find copies of his books.… (más)