"Badlands" by Richard Montanari is the fourth installment featuring the detective team of Kevin Byrne and Jessica Balzano. "Badlands" refers to the portion of the city, north Philadelphia, which has been a blight for decades. Byrne and Balzano catch the case of teenage runaways girls who turn up dead. The newspapers have dubbed this madman, "The Collector". The Collector has kidnapped several runaways and one by one they turn up being murdered in a gruesome manner. Byrne and Balzano soon discover the Collector is creating a puzzle within the badlands leaving his victims as clues to his horrific scheme. With each girl turning up violently murdered, more cops get added onto the case. This is a very intense and suspenseful story line to say the least. Having worked in the badlands for several years myself, the graphic crimes and locations really hit home for me. Author Montanari has put together a very good detective team with Byrne and Balzano. With each passing book they are becoming like one very good detective that has skills of each. The chemistry is so much more evident here in the fourth book. Some very good dialog, especially from the Collector really adds a strong plus for this story line. I've really enjoyed all four of these books in the series so far. Mr. Montanari has really captured the flavor and idiosyncrasy of Philadelphia's neighborhoods. This is a 5 star out of a possible 5 stars for sure. It's a very good mystery/ thriller that delivers quite a punch to the gut. I'd highly recommend not only this book, but this series to all fans of the mystery/ thriller genre. Pick up this series, you surely will not be sorry. Especially if you live or grew up in the Philadelphia area. This book is definitely a thriller/crime story worth reading. The whole book is filled with lots of twists, turns and action. This book is about a serial killer who is abducting teenage runaway girls and copying his father's magic tricks to kill the girls. One reason why this book is exciting is because it goes from the point of view of the detectives trying to solve the case to the serial killer himself. So overall you read how the detectives are trying to catch the killer and how the killer is killing his victims.You get a good image in your mind of what you think could have happened to the teenage girls in this story. Another reason why the book was exciting was because it was broken it 109 parts/chapters. Some of these were really short (1-2 pages) and some were quite long (5-12 pages). Although there was only 398 pages. Overall, this story was gripping, exciting, filled with suspense, action, murder and twists n' turns. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who lives a good crime novel.
Do You like book 7 (2000)?
Excellent I couldn't stop reading till I had finished the book.
—benjy
Fats read, great page turner, lots a good twists
—adesh
