In The Delta

In The Delta
In The Delta

Saturday, July 26, 2014

A Blood Red Sky - Volume 4 in the Rick Sandler/Katie O'Hara series



Okay, so the sky is more salmon than blood red.  I couldn't afford to buy the rights to a bloodier sky.

And so it begins:

He moves through the crowded streets of Hong Kong, in pursuit of his latest victim.  When she turns into a narrow alleyway, he hesitates, but only for a moment.  His greatest gift is his supreme confidence in his own infallibility.

Through the dusty window of a tiny shop, he sees her.  The Chinese characters on the window are meaningless to him, but the displays inside are not.  It is a store selling CD's, DVD's, and videotapes.
He enters and pretends interest in a bin of used videos.  The sign over the box is in English - American Movies – Murder and Mystery.  It is almost the last video in the box.  The cover is a familiar scene - a place he knows well.  It speaks of a place that seems almost like home to him.  The movie's title causes him to laugh aloud.  To anyone else, it would be a simple, fortuitous discovery.  But to him, its meaning is clear.  It is time to return.  To pick up where he left off, so to speak.

In Los Angeles,  as The Doors famously sang 'hills are filled with fire'  It is a time of unrelenting heat giving rise, not only to wild fires, but to a constant sense of oppressive menace.  

Katie O'Hara and Rick Sandler have made their home in a new place.  The Movie Murderer is, if not exactly forgotten, buried somewhere in their consciousness, never completely out of their thoughts, but fading a little more with each passing day.

Until the discovery of a young mother, slaughtered in her home while her husband and baby enjoy their morning in Griffith Park.  She is the first in a series of unspeakable killings, the horror of which can mean only one thing.  The Movie Murderer has returned to take up the game with Rick Sandler and to possess the ultimate prize - Katie O'Hara.

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