The Violet Hour (1998)
A popular priest lies dead of a heroin overdose in an inner city flop house, following an apparent tryst with a high-priced call girl. Nicholas Stella knew the man, and he knows saleable news when he finds it.
But there is something waiting for the struggling freelance journalist on the dead cleric's e-mail that suggests that this is not just another sordid case of fatal human frailty. A clue, a warning, a threat in the words of a great poet cries out that this was no accident.
And it's beckoning Nick Stella into the dark, twisted and terrifying mind of a psychopath.
In an affluent Ohio suburb a world away, Amelia Saintsbury's computer screen carries the same cryptic message. Someone is watching her . . . and waiting. A nightmare stands just outside her door, ready to devour everything and everyone she cares about -- her life, her home, her innocent little girl -- uniting Amelia and an unorthodox city reporter in a desperate hunt for a killer.
A novel of unrelenting suspense and surprise, Richard Montanari’s THE VIOLET HOUR is a masterful work by an exceptional talent; a riveting tale of secrets, serial terror and ingenious revenge that moves at breakneck speed with a chilling and powerful grace.
Praise for The Violet Hour
"Consistently surprising . . . Montanari keeps the reader deliciously off balance throughout, letting the novel accrue horrors and deft misdirections, right until its gory end." - Publishers Weekly
"Stephen King would approve of the literary tension that Montanari creates. The author fits his strange puzzle pieces together in a Dali-esque climax."
- The Akron Beacon Journal
"THE VIOLET HOUR is top notch suspense from the hands of a new and promising master." - America Online
"The novel is, like the nameless killer's victims, well executed. And like the killer himself, fiendishly twisted. A real page turner." - Booklist
