VELOCITY

Billy Wiles has been forced into a game of moral jeopardy by a lurid serial killer who forces him to choose the next victim. The game accelerates, the deadlines grow tighter, the killer becomes bolder and crueler with every communication, the mutilations ever more grotesque, the decisions intensely personal . . . until they finally involve Barbara, Billy's fiancée, who is helpless in a botulism-induced coma. Michael Hayden is masterful at creating the vibrato of beer-based psychoanalysis, the garbled quality of talking around a toothbrush, and the exquisite timing of a winch line turning on a drum, a sound that pulls the listener further and further into this impossible-to-wake-up-from nightmare. Prepare yourself for a Machiavellian extravaganza. K.A.T. © AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine [Published: OCT/NOV 05]