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In New York City, another serial killer is on the loose and his victims are all gay men. After the murderer kills, he attaches a pair of swan wings on his nude victims, poses them in a specific way, puts a design that looks like a circle on their chest, and writes the name of a fallen angel on the wall behind them. This case is given to Lieutenant James Sakura and his special high profile team to solve. Things are going very slowly. No one can figure out how the victims die and the murderer doesnıt leave any kind of evidence. There is little or no blood present at the homicide scene so the police canıt even say for certain where the killings took place. Suddenly things go very sour when another body is found in a church, but this time the victim is not a gay man, but a little girl. She is found with swan wings attached to her back and her body is hung from the churchıs ceiling over the alter. The child is posed to look just like an angel. The city is in an uproar and Sakura knows that he has to find the murderer fast. Complicating things is a leak coming from his own group of detectives. Someone is telling a newspaper reporter exactly what was found at every crime scene and the reporter, trying to achieve a way to get into television news, is telling the public everything in her articles. This only adds the publicıs frenzy and to the pressure put on the police to solve the case before someone else is murdered. A CRUEL SEASON FOR DYING is author Harker Mooreıs first novel. Mr. Moore introduces us to James Sakura, a skillful homicide detective who is a soft spoken Japanese-American. Although Sakura was born in America, he was brought up in Japan by his grandparents after his motherıs death. He eventually came to America to live with his father and his new family, but Sakura never got over the difficulties of his childhood. We also meet Sakuraıs Japanese born, blind wife and the readers get to know her well, seeing how she tries to help her husband with his personal problems. Adding to the characters are a beautiful FBI profiler who once trained Sakura and Sakuraıs former partner who ran into problems when he was a cop. Both are now trying to help him find the killer. A CRUEL SEASON FOR DYING starts out as a very promising novel but it eventually falls into the often used, usual serial murder mystery pattern. The reader is quickly able to figure out who the killer is and after that, itıs just a matter of waiting until police catch up to what we already know. Even though this storyline falls short, I have high hopes for this new series. Moore is an excellent writer with an artistic flair for describing details and his characters are truly interesting. I would have liked to have learned a little more about his former partner and I hope that the author will eventually write a prequel so we know exactly what happened that made him leave the force. I recommend A CRUEL SEASON FOR DYING because of Mooreıs writing style and his characters, but seasoned psychological thriller readers will find much of the novel familiar.
Reviewed by Sharon Katz, July 2003
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