This novel won the Mystery Writers of American Edgar Award for Best Novel. Circling high over Rockefeller Center is a peregrine falcon, the most awesome of the flying predators. She awaits a signal from her falconer. It is given: the bird attacks, plummeting from the sky at nearly 200 miles an hour, striking a young woman and killing her instantly. By chance, newscaster Pamela Barrett witnesses the slaying. Her impassioned account of it on television that evening thrills the falconer — a brilliant madman who identifies with his deadly bird and, through her, seeks catharsis. He becomes fascinated with Pam and enmeshes her in a bizarre and deadly scheme even as she finds herself drawn to him by an erotic need she does not understand. As killing follows killing, the terrified city beomes the backdrop of an extraordinary drama. Police and the media engage in cutthroat competition to find the murderer. Two predator birds are pitted in a fight to the death above Central Park. Call girls, rich eccentrics, striving careerists, dealers in the black market for rare birds — all play their roles in this study of secret passion, desire, fulfillment, and ecstasy. The ancient sport of falconry, in which birds are trained to hunt and kill on command, is the key to the spectacular operatic finale. For all its excitement and intricate detail, PEREGRINE is more than a thriller: it is a study of secret passion – desire, fulfillment, ecstasy. In the falconer, in Pam his prey, and in the burnt-out detective who finds in this case a means to his salvation, author WILLIAM BAYER has created vibrant characters each of whom is both hunter and hunted, each of whom fulfills the others in extraordinary ways.

New York Times best-selling crime fiction writer, William Bayer, breaks new ground with this novel, a coming-of-age/psychological mystery.Hiding in the Weave, written from the perspective of18 year old Joel Barlev, a senior at Delamere, a school geared to talented young artists, plays off themes typically found in classic boarding school novels (like....)—requited and unrequited romantic relationships, alienation, rebellion, sexuality, troubled home lives, moral dilemmas, epiphanies and acquiring maturity.But there is more here . . . much more . . ."What cannot be spoken shall be danced. What cannot be danced shall be woven. And what cannot be woven shall be marked upon the flesh."That's the strange mantra of Liv Anders, a gifted dancer and weaver at Delamere. Joel, an equally gifted ceramic artist, finds himself falling in love with her, as intrigued by her mantra as by her casual comment regarding their different art forms: "You gouge your...

When his own goddaughter becomes the latest victim of a serial killer wielding an ice pick, New York City Detective Frank Janek knows he must get inside the mind of a serial killer to locate this monster. Reprint. NYT. K. From Publishers WeeklyBayer brings back Switch protagonist Frank Janek in this uneven thriller with close parallels to Thomas Harris's Red Dragon. Celebrated NYPD lieutenant Janek is called home from vacation--and a pleasant romantic entanglement--after his goddaughter is found stabbed to death and sexually mutilated in Central Park, the latest victim of a serial killer. Devastated and determined to find the killer, Janek is kept off the case because of his personal involvement and because the matter is now under FBI jurisdiction. He gets around these obstacles by means of his old amorous ties to his boss, Kit Kopta, and the clout of his success in the Switch case--a reference Bayer makes too often. Early revelation of the slayer's identity is likely to disappoint readers, who may also be put off by gratuitous descriptions of gruesome murders. A potentially tricky ending doesn't live up to its promise, and while occasional passages display the animated, original writing style of Bayer's earlier books, this yarn is far too tidy to captivate. Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Kirkus ReviewsAlways an inventive suspense-writer, Bayer outwits himself here with a fractured, Rube Goldberg-like thriller that pits the cop-hero of his first big seller (Switch, 1984) against an unlikely serial killer. As before, middle-aged NYPD homicide detective Frank Janek proves a most winsome protagonist, valiant yet vulnerable. And as in Blind Side and Pattern Crimes, Bayer starts seductively, with a moving prelude that highlights Janek's humanity as the cop takes his first vacation in ten years, in Venice, and falls in love with a German tourist. Janek's idyll is shattered by a phone call informing him that his beloved goddaughter Jess has been slain- -latest victim of a serial killer wanted by the FBI. Trading on old debts, Janek gets assigned to the case as an FBI adjunct (solid detailing of FBI-NYPD rivalry here); his inspired investigation uncovers dread secrets (e.g., that Jess had joined a sex-club) but also a prime suspect: Jess's therapist, man-hating Beverly Archer. However, while breaking into Archer's home for clues, Janek is near-fatally wounded by one of Beverly's patients, a convicted murderess whose room yields strong evidence of her guilt as the serial killer. So far, so brilliant; this is Bayer at his most suspenseful and resonant--but then the narrative veers into overplotted excess, as Bayer reconstructs the genesis and execution of the killings from Archer's point of view (in a shrill, unconvincing voice), and then from that of the murderess, who turns out to have been programmed by Archer to avenge past shames. And when the narrative returns to Janek, his trapping of Archer involves a ploy so far-fetched and a denouement so poetically just as to defy credulity. So: by turns enthralling and just plain silly--a spirited but strained miscalculation by an author who more often than not has been right on the mark. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Tangier, a sweeping novel of romance and intrigue set in a fabled North African resort, may remind readers of the Alexandria Quartet. In this book Tangier is more than just a place; it is a city of unholy loves. Titled Europeans, Moroccan hustlers, aging former Nazis, decadents of every sort play out their rituals, competing for stunning lovers and social power.Their schemes and passions are a subject of fascination to the hero of the book, a brilliant young police inspector. But even as he is fascinated he is also repelled, searching always to understand the privileged foreign colony, to unravel its weave of secrets. He finds the key, finally, in the person of a beautiful Eurasian woman, whose own mysterious past he manages to unveil. Through her eyes he comes to see Tangier in a new way. Sustained by her love he rediscovers the city and finds a different role in it for himself.Against the drama of this love story other characters emerge: An America Consul becomes embroiled in an affair with his Vice-Consul's wife. A retired British character actor strives to preserve his dignity as his friends betray him and he feels an intimation of his death. A Canadian gossip columnist struggles not to lose himself in the gay world of Tangier. There is a young Frenchman corrupted by his love for an older woman; a radical Arab surgeon; a fifth-rate Soviet spy-a "burnt-out case"; squabbling writers; cruel social arbiters; a male prostitute named "Pumpkin Pie".Watched closely by the police inspector as they slip in and out of each others' lives, these and other characters ignore the storm that gathers slowly above their town. In the end it sweeps them up with dizzying force. Tangier is revealed in a violent and dazzling finale.PRAISE FOR TANGIER—Publisher’s Weekly: “Colorful - panoramic - an atmospheric novel of conflict, vengeance, intrigue and deceit against the exotic background that is Tangier - a novel which also possesses genuine psychological insights.” —Washington Post: “The city is the main character of this intricate novel in which East and West meet convulsively and with mutual puzzlement. William Bayer keeps scrupulously the narrative promises he has made and implied, the strands woven so cleverly and in such complex patterns, dyed with a strong influence of atmosphere, that one proceeds willingly, even hastily, through the close-packed pages. As the pages turn and evidence accumulates, its hard to avoid the conclusion that what we have on our hands is the work of a moralist. Bayer conceals what he is up to with considerable skill until the reader is firmly hooked and it is too late to back out.” —Erie PA Times: “You can’t possibly read the novel Tangier by William Bayer without wanting someday to visit this exotic North African city. Tangier would be worth reading if it were nothing more than a novel of mood, a travelogue, in effect, describing one of the most mysterious cities in the world. But Bayer’s Tangier is much more than that; it is also a fine thriller and a psychological novel of considerable insight.” —Cleveland Plain Dealer: “Tangier is a compulsive page-turner. Once you begin this exotic, erotic novel about the foreign colony in the Moroccan city of the title, you’ll not be able to stop. In short, William Bayer’s Tangier contains all the ingredients a reader could ask of an atmospheric action novel. But the book is more, a psychological novel of extraordinary insights. This is a novel that stays in the mind.” — Los Angeles Times: “The graceful prose is as dazzling as the white washed city in full sun...” —Harvard Magazine: “Titled Europeans jostle Moroccan hustlers and aging Nazis in an unremitting struggle for lovers and social power. Atmospheric fiction tinged with cynicism.”

In this multi-layered psychological mystery, photographer Jason Poe is transfixed by a disturbing set of murals he encounters in the attic of an abandoned house, and resolves to uncover the secret behind them. "The murals hit me hard. First came terror, then awe. It was only after I'd taken them in that I began to feel their immense power." Jason Poe, a former war photographer, has been breaking into abandoned houses for an art project to document what previous tenants have left behind. One night he finds more than expected when he ascends to an attic and is confronted by a haunting set of murals. The murals cover all four walls of the cramped space and hypnotise Jason. Convinced there's an important story behind them, he embarks upon a quest to identify their creator and uncover their meaning. To do so Jason recruits several friends, including Joan Nguyen, a reporter for Calista Times-Dispatch. As the team delve deeper they uncover a mystery...

Punish Me with Kisses is the story of two sisters and the Mysterious Dark Man to whom both are helplessly drawn. It begins in Bar Harbor, Maine, summer playground of the rich. Shy and sensitive Penny Berring watches as her beautiful sister Suzie puts on a bizarre display- flaunting her transgressions beneath her parent's windows. Her behavior is strange, and compelling, and then...a scream in the night, and Suzie is murdered. There is a sensational inconclusive trial. And an enigma: What really happened? Who killed Suzie, and why? Three years pass. Penny is now living a quiet life in New York. Then it all starts again. She finds Suzie's secret diary. It propels her on a strange, surreal oddyssey of her own and on toward a horrifying secret.

Detective Frank Janek immediately knows that he has entered the realm of a lethal madness. Middle-aged, divorced, a man centered solely on his work, Janek is practiced in piercing the minds of the criminals he pursues. In the absence of clues from the killer, he has only the awful symmetry of the crime to work with, only his own finely honed intuition.

A woman who sees what others cannot see seeks the murderer of a young street hustler, a man she had befriended in photographing San Francisco's dark, sexually charged netherworld.

ITY OF KNIVES is a psychological thriller set in one of the world's most fascinating cities. The destinies of four main characters, each pursuing his/her own agenda, intersect in Buenos Aires.

In 1903, a tall woman with flashing Tartar eyes was the talk of military circles, newspaper offices and salons. Her name was Isabelle Eberhardt, and the life she actually led made her justifiably the object of the most scandalous gossip in Paris as well as in North Africa. This compelling novel is a fictional biography.

In this fascinating psychological neo-noir mystery, a notorious late 19th-century photograph provides the key to a contemporary murder.In 1882, the young Lou Andreas-Salome, writer, psychoanalyst and femme fatale, appears with Friedrich Nietzche and another man in a bizarre photograph taken in Luzern, Switzerland. Over thirty years later, an intense art student in Freud's Vienna presents Lou Salome with his own drawing based on the infamous photograph.In the present day, Tess Berenson, a brilliant performance artist, moves into an art deco loft in downtown Oakland, California. Her new apartment, she learns, was vacated in a hurry by a professional dominatrix who used the name Chantal Desforges. Tess's curiosity about Chantal intensifies when her body is discovered in the trunk of a stolen car at Oakland airport.Embarking on an obsessive investigation into the murder, Tess discovers a link to the original Luzern photograph and the 1913 drawing – but...