I don't know why this novel doesn't get a higher rating. I was just astounded when I first read it. Michael Dibdin, who IS a good writer of literary detective fiction, is mainly known for his Aurelio Zen series books. Good stuff. That's not what Dark Spectre (my copy has the British spelling) is about. Yeah, it's sort of a modern crime novel but of a completely different kind from Aurelio Zen.

This is one of those books where several seemingly disconnected stories are going on at the same time. They are all interesting to read in their own right. One wonders how they will turn out. But all along you keep asking: what the hell is really going on? Why is this book about all these different people with nothing in common? What is the author doing with this? Is each story just going to end, like a parallel short story collection?

Well, I'm not going to spoil it. All these separate characters are going to become suddenly essential to each other. All the time-lines will merge at one place and one moment. All these questions will be answered but the answer will not be what you thought it was going to be. And the book isn't about what you thought it was about.

Have fun. ( )

This author is British but this really good mystery/thriller is strictly American. ( )

What can this author not do? Rich characters, even the most minor of them sketched vibrantly, plotting that leaves me guessing until the last page, beautiful prose, well-researched scenes (He's been there! You can tell.) and then a thought or two. This particular novel's topic - theological, along the lines of "How can God, assuming God exists, allow this to happen?" is not so engaging. The cult distortions are predictable. Nonetheless, it provides a floor for this horrific (and a shade too violent for my taste) plot and I am thinking about how distortions of belief (any kind of belief) change behavior. There is also the line, on page 63:"I made a vow never to let chance interfere in my arrangements again." The theme of this entire mystery might well be that sentence and what we know will happen. And finally, Mr. Dibdin sketches the tawdriness of our culture now but out of this mess, arise heros. Holy heroes. Not superheros, but real ones. Even if they are women.

notes for further discussion: p.232 - how his faith is based on his own experience
p.251: predates the DaVinci code - by 7 years!
p.267: noteworthy ( )

Dibdin is one of the more literate mysery writers; you know, the ones that don’t describe characters by the brand name clothes they wear. His serial protagonist is Aurelio Zen, an Italian policeman, and many of those novels have been set in Italy. This one has no police main character as such and switches the perspectives between Phil, the father of a young boy who has been abducted, Kristine,a police detective in Seattle who notices some bizarre similarities in seemingly random homicides throughout the United States, and the members of a strange religious cult run by Sam, an old college pal of Phil’s.

It turns out that Sam has convinced his followers (and himself), that he is Los, the character in William Blake, and that he has the proven way to salvation, but the initiates have to prove themselves by killing “specters.” His rationale is that since God is love and is all-powerful, it is oxymoronic that he would permit his children to suffer. Therefore, the pain and suffering that do happen are being inflicted not on real people, real humans, but specters. “You can beat people, shoot them, burn them, torture them, anything at all! Because God allows you to do it, the victim was never really there in the first place. An emanation, a mere shadow. ‘Why wilt thou give to her a body whose life is but a shade?,’ Jerusalem, chapter twelve, verse one.”

So his followers prove themselves by killing the occupants of houses that are chosen using a bizarre system of random number generators. Of course, this makes connecting the victims to one another an impossible task for the police. Phil is lured to Sam’s island near Seattle, ostensibly as one of the chosen few, since Phil had been something of a Blake afficionado -- if that’s possible. He becomes the catalyst that begins the unraveling of Sam’s psychotic plans. ( )

In my opinion this is a weak story. After 3 chapters it was almost clear where the plot is leading. In addition to all the different locations of the violences and the struggling of the multitude of police forces the leading of the story wasn't getting better. The idea of writing a story about the danger of sects, the strict obedience of the members, the morbid thinking of these leaders is a great effort but in this case badly realised. ( )