Butcher of Dreams

Set in the seedy mid-80s New York City neighborhood of Hell’s Kitchen—where drugs and prostitution run rampant—Lee Fairchild’s repertory theater is the perfect place for murder. The theater was an abandoned burlesque house where the homeless lived. The third floor makes Lee uneasy with its scattering of feathers and bones. Still, having the theater is a dream come true. If her husband hadn’t died six months earlier, she’d be euphoric.
It doesn't matter, she tells herself, that her brilliant Artistic Director, Alan Dunbar, has mysterious gaps in his resume since they last worked together; that her guest director, Ernst Kromer, is uncooperative; that the theater is under-staffed. Times Square redevelopment makes the property desirable.
She finds the mutilated body of a homeless man on the third floor, a crack vial and black candles beside him. Mordecai Green, cynical NYPD detective (who also moonlights as an actor), investigates. The death is termed suspicious.
Lee’s call to a temp agency brings her Michael Day, sexy and mysterious. He’s charming, helpful, generous to a fault. He confides he recently had a car accident and still has severe headaches. He shrugs it off but Lee sees he's worried. Lonely, she falls into a passionate affair with the younger man.
At a cast party held at Lee's home, Alan's lover, psychiatrist Walter Kaplan, also attends. He’s intrigued by the Mexican mask hanging on Lee's wall, says he’s doing a paper on Indian rites and occult practices for the Society of Medical Anthropology. Lee tells him the mask supposedly had been used in Aztec sacrifices. The Indian who’d sold it to her late husband said it had an ancient curse. Maybe the Indian was right, Lee thinks. Richard was too healthy to have had a heart attack and die.
After the party ends, Lee discovers the mask is missing.
The theater has a run of bad luck. An actor is stabbed. An actress is poisoned.
When the missing finger of the homeless man shows up on the third floor, entangled in the bodice of Lee’s nightgown, she pays a visit to Detective Green. Someone, she says, is trying to scare them off the property. Green also suggests Santeria practices.
The missing Mexican mask, its three eyes glittering with malice, hovers over the theater like a demented moon. In the shadows is the figure who controls it—until the mask takes control of him.
Bizarre events escalate to ritual murder. Is there a cult at the theater? Is it a psycho, working alone? Does someone want the theater property?
Lee discovers the shocking truth. But not before she almost loses the theater, and, in a heart-pounding climax, nearly loses her life. Winner Reader Views Literary Award, Best Mystery/Suspense/Thriller, 2008

“This mystery is so character driven that it is easy to suspect any of the theater company...they all have something to hide. But it is Lee's ultimate struggle with loneliness and an overloaded professional struggle that brings the story to its shocking climax. Don't start this wonderful story if you have something else to do, because this fantastic plot will win the fight! A big thumbs up!!” –Shelley Glodowski, Midwest Book Review

“The writing is tight and precise. The characters are amazingly detailed and believable, with their back-stories intricately weaving in and out of the main story line. It is one of the really thrilling mysteries I’ve read, remaining mysterious to the very end and scary enough that I did not want to read it when I was alone in the house.” Olivera Baumgartner-Jackson, Reader Views.com

“The book is set in a world both real and unreal, tangible and imagined. This unusual, arresting dynamic makes it fascinating. . . One can never be truly sure whether something is artifice or reality, an acting moment or an emotional moment, and this uncertainty keeps the reader off-guard and interested. Involving and surprising.” Tory Lowe, Ashland University Collegian