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Though the title THE MADMAN'S TALE promised a topic I didn't think I'd find interesting, I was prepared for a good experience, having read and enjoyed most of Katzenbach's earlier works. His skill with the writing craft is beyond question, and the reader can relax, knowing good hands hold her as she journeys along the twisted pathway of Katzenbach's amazing plots. This time, however, he has outdone himself. The narrator is astounding, the sense of place he gives and his voice is as clear as any I've encountered in crime/mystery fiction with an added zest: he's announced as 'unreliable' from the beginning. Even as he speaks to you, you're never really sure if the words are true or even, for that matter, to whom they might be true if true they are! Oh, this is a terrific tale! Using mainly the viewpoint of a young patient in an insane asylum, Katzenbach takes us on a path of discovery to an evil that haunts the narrator in the present. By revealing to us, the readers, what happened before, the unlikely hero hopes to resolve his own mystery and to come to grips finally with the hideous memory that has stalked him over the decades between past and present. All characters are drawn fully even when we see little of them on stage. The pathos of madness and the madness of sanity are presented without flinching by a writer who has made the interior life of a madman one of the most interesting I've shared in a long, long time. Thank you, Mr. Katzenbach. To you reading this review: get the book! Do not wait for the paperback on this one. Don't even wait for the trade. Go for the hardback. This is a writer who deserves our money. It's a keeper and a re-reader.
Reviewed by Sharon Brondos, April 2004
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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