The Hands of Eddy Loyd

The author of Blind Man's Bluff and other gripping tales, Johnson presents a thriller that veers from a simple police action in a big city into a weirdly tantalizing mystery. A team headed by detectives Tony Lento and Pat Runnion breaks into an apartment where they expect to arrest lecherous Eddy Loyd, drug dealer and rapist. No one is there, not even a corpse, but numerous blood stains indicate a recent killingpresumably Loyd's. During the ensuing investigation, the officers fail to find the remains of the felon but do discover his fingerprints at the scene of other murders. Lento and Runnion then concentrate on a search for Loyd in the flesh and for the exotic weapon used by the killera machete. Even more bizarre and baffling are signs of cannibalism. The odds against solving the case and the dangers facing the remarkably brave detectives both increase, right up to the moment when they dig up evidence of unimaginable but real horrors. Johnson deserves credit as an author who tells a decidedly different story extremely well, without sensationalizing the macabre aspects of the plot. (July)