Review of "Shadow Games," by Ed Gorman

 Review of

Shadow Games, by Ed Gorman, ISBN 1857820312

Five out of five stars

Several gruesome murders with several suspects

 Cobey Daniels is a young star that seemingly has an incredible future. However, he has a deep and deadly dark side and when he is caught with a 14-year-old girl in what appears to have been a prelude to a murder, his career vaporizes. Daniels is also a person that will drink to the point of blacking out and while under the influence, he exhibits a tendency to homicidal violence. When he awakens, he has no memory of recent events. 

 Daniels appears to be clean and is in the process of regaining his star stature when he awakens from a blackout and finds a decapitated corpse where the head is in the refrigerator. With no memory of the incident, Daniels tries to manage the situation. Over the years since the incident with the 14-year-old, he has had the help of a male private problem solver and a female manager, the combination of which helps Daniels retain some form of control over his life. 

 Other people get murdered in very brutal ways and it seems very unlikely that Daniels is responsible, although in most cases there is some doubt. There are hints of other potential homicidal characters in the first part of the book, all of which are effectively resolved at the end. 

 Gorman is at the top of his game with this book. He occasionally pops into italicized asides that are the machinations of a criminal mind. The reader is left trying to discern the culprits based on the clues dropped on a regular basis. It turns out that there are several homicidal maniacs in the story, some of which are obvious, but others are not revealed until the end of the book. It is a whodunit with plural whos. 


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