RATING: 3.25He had an abusive childhood, raised by an unstable mother who headed a religious sect which had revival meetings at their home. Whenever these took place, he was locked in a closet, alone with the spiders that would bite him. As an adult, he became a member of a top-secret military group that participated in covert operations. Now that he's returned to civilian life, he's combined all of the elements of his past to become a serial killer. He preys on confident women who live in high-rise buildings, entering their apartments by cutting the glass on their bedroom windows. He then wraps them tightly in sheets while they sleep and stabs them 37 times through the sheets. Each individual assault is not lethal; rather it's a combination of all the stabbings that lead to the victim slowly bleeding to death.The NYPD is completely flummoxed by the case and call on retired homicide captain Thomas Horn to lead the investigation. He works closely with 2 detectives, Paula Ramboquette and Roy Bickerstaff, to try to follow the clues presented in the "Night Spider's" three killings. Horn is approached by someone from Mr. Spider's past and is finally able to create a profile of the killer (with the aid of a waitress at a diner he frequents who just happens to have been a psychologist), but not before many more murders occur.Unfortunately for Mr. Lutz, serial killer books have inundated the crime fiction marketplace. It takes something really extraordinary to overcome the reluctance of the crime fiction reader to face yet another serial killer who exhibits all the expected traits of these villains: abusive childhood, sociopathic behavior, etc. The means of killing do make this book unique, but on the whole, it doesn't feel fresh or different.Mr. Lutz is a fine writer, and I particularly enjoy his Alo Nudger series. He does build a great deal of psychological suspense in THE NIGHT SPIDER, but the book is overly long with too many victims, which dilutes the thriller aspect. On top of that, I just could not buy the killer's modus operandi. I just didn't see how the killer could tightly wrap a sleeping woman in her sheets without waking her up. The book didn't work for me but might for someone who is less jaundiced about the serial killer phenomenon.
