Hero or villain? Leland author's 'Shakespeare Killer' stalks lawyers in new thriller

Leland author Douglas J. Wood brings back his sleuth, FBI profiler Chris DeMeglio, in his latest novel, "The Shakespeare Killer."

A whole bench of defense lawyers is suddenly dying across the country. One drowns off Key West. Another appears to leap from a skyscraper. A third is found hanged in his Chicago office.

Each body is accompanied by a suicide note, expressing guilt for a variety of crimes. (The drowned man's was thoughtfully placed in a sealed plastic bag.)

San Diego newspaper reporter Carla Lane, however, finds just enough to suggest that the deaths are not suicides. She approaches Special Agent DeMeglio to suggest that a serial killer is on the loose.

DeMeglio, like all good detectives, is skeptical at first. But he's eager to get back to work after a tour as "the FBI's poster boy" on television. (He's a national celebrity after cracking the case in Wood's previous novel, "Blood on the Bayou.")

Soon, he's getting phone calls — untraceable, of course — from the killer, taunting him with clues from Shakespeare. Including, of course, "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers," from "Henry VI." (That quote, by the way, comes from a character named Jack the Butcher.)

After so many novels, films and TV series, it's hard to get a new angle on a serial killer. How many more times can we do Hannibal Lecter?

Book reviews by Wilmington-area authors A Wilmington writer's WWII thriller compares favorably to work by well-known authors

Wilmington-based author Clyde Edgerton once remarked that evil is boring; it's sin that's interesting. The really fascinating cases are the ones with ordinary perpetrators, like poor, mousy Dr. Hawley Crippen of England, pushed too far by an overbearing wife and in love with a pretty young secretary. Who would have thought he'd dismember his wife in the bathtub and dissolve her in acid? (It's a crime he'd be executed for in 1910.)

Still, Wood, a semi-retired lawyer, has the frame of a solid mystery. His text runs a bit too long, and his dialogue could use some work, but he presents readers with a solid puzzle and an adequate solution.

Book review

'THE SHAKESPEARE KILLER'

By Douglas J. Wood

Plum Bay Publishing, $18.99 paperback

This article originally appeared on Wilmington StarNews: 'The Shakespeare Killer,' a thriller by Leland author Douglas J. Wood