The Ascending

When psychic Ryerson Biergarten offers his special talents to the police to help them find a serial killer with a penchant for hiding his victims in odd corners of office buildings, he is met with distrust and suspicion as he faces an evil beyond his control

From Publishers Weekly

Over an eight-year span, people have been getting killed, gutted and stuffed in the ceiling spaces of ultra-high rise landmark buildings in Chicago, New York and now Toronto. In this latest installment in the adventures of psychic detective Ryerson Biergarten--some of which Wright ( Goodlow's Ghosts ) has published in paperback under the pseudonym "F. W. Armstrong,"--Ryerson wants to help the Toronto cops nail the killer, but homicide detective Dan Creed is unhappy with the psychic's most recent work and won't officially assign him to the case. With the moral support of his sock-chewing Boston Bull terrier, however, as well as with the reluctantly accepted help of a pesky self-proclaimed psychic and would-be partner, Ryerson gradually realizes that his recent onrush of psychic messages point to one suspect--and not the one whom Creed has pegged as the killer. Unfortunately, the escalating tension of the murders and of the search for the killer--which culminates in a harrowing scene at Toronto's CN tower--is rewarded with a strange and unclear payoff, one involving the fate of the killer and the spirit that has possessed him for years. Nevertheless, Wright convincingly proves that he understands, as few do, how to give a scare without spilling blood all over the page. Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Wright's psychic detective Ryerson Biergarten (Goodlow's Ghosts, Tor Bks., 1993) makes a second appearance here, this time seeking a serial killer who wraps his victims in plastic and then ties the bodies to pipes above the drop ceilings of office buildings. Rye works by "entering" the minds of the criminals he seeks, but it seems that this killer is possessed by the spirit of one of his victims, thus making detection more difficult. Nonetheless, Rye eventually confronts and stops the killer, nearly losing his soul in the process. Scary? Certainly. But by relying more on an eerie atmosphere and spooky psychic phenomena than on plot and characterization, Wright has created a work that is more mood than substance. Also, he never fully explains the killer's motives, and he leaves some plot lines dangling, resulting in a work that is ultimately unsatisfying. Buy on demand only.Rebecca House Stankowski, Purdue Univ. Calumet Lib., Hammond, Ind.Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Reviews

News