High Priestess

Warren Ritter--fugitive, Tarot card reader, ex-revolutionary, millionaire--is in hot water up to his neck again in Skibbins' follow-up to the excellent Eight of Swords, which won the Malice Domestic/St. Martin's award in 2004. A Satanist is asking him to look into a series of serial killings, which seem somehow to be tied to Warren's Weather Underground activities of the 1960s. And if that weren't bad enough, the Satanist's sister is a woman from Warren's past, determined to make trouble in Warren's present. Having committed to seeing his problems through in the first book (Warren has a history of running for the hills), he can't abandon his love Sally and the teenager she "adopted" earlier in the series. So even when Warren sees a pattern to the killings, even when Sally is mad enough at him to cut him off entirely, and even when he's considered a suspect in the crimes, Warren doggedly battles his manic depression and his past to see the investigation to its conclusion. As in the first book in the series, Skibbins juggles the wild contradictions of Warren's personality well, creating a three-dimensional character whom readers will want to know better and better as the series continues. And Warren continues to grow as a person in this book, as the author is not content to put his characters through the same paces again and again. The dialogue is quick and intelligent, the plot turns come just when you want them and the characters are real, living people you can care about. Warren Ritter is a unique creation in mystery fiction, and hopefully, this book will introduce him to a wider audience. He and his creator deserve it.

I'd read the first book, EIGHT OF SWORDS and loved it, thus I was really looking forward to the opportunity to read HIGH PRIESTESS. I wasn't disappointed. Warren and crew are some of the coolest characters I've come across. That Warren has had a difficult life is a huge understatement. HIGH PRIESTESS gives the reader much more insight into Warren's past and what drives him. A man with ties to Warren's past appears and wants him to solve some murders. This man is willing to do whatever it takes to persuade Warren to take the job. A real inner struggle ensues for Warren as he tries to solve the murders, stay alive, deal with his demons, and keep relationships he's come to value. I don't want to spoil EIGHT OF SWORDS if you've not had a chance to read it yet, so won't go into many character details. Many of the folks from EIGHT OF SWORDS are back as well and still helping Warren when he'll allow it. The Berkeley location where the story takes place is a character of its own. Mr. Skibbins writes of wind and fog that made me feel as if I were alternately windblown from the Santa Ana winds and damp from foggy mists. HIGH PRIESTESS hands Warren not only a mystery to solve, but the opportunity for growth, healing, and maturity. It was a pleasure to see him live up to all those possibilities. If you like character driven stories and characters you can truly care about, then both of David Skibbins' books are highly recommended.

HIGH PRIESTESS is the second in a series of novels by David Skibbins, a tale of murder and madness that stretches back over decades into the tumultuous 1960s. Warren Ritter, the protagonist of this intriguing piece, is hardly a likable character, even if one wholeheartedly embraces his politics of destruction. He professes to love chaos but complains about the random wind that disturbs the tarot reading business he so dearly loves to call his own. He never misses an opportunity to gripe about the system in general and the American Dream in particular, but has plenty of free time to wallow in self-pity (and to indulge in his foodie predilections) due to having fortuitously invested in Microsoft. As Skibbins himself notes in a responsible afterword in HIGH PRIESTESS, Ritter is an eccentric and unstable man. So with all of this baggage, why is there so much to recommend in HIGH PRIESTESS? The answer, in a word, is Skibbins. He has created a controversial character who is not going to be universally loved, or even liked, but nonetheless has built a compelling, readable world around him. That world is Berkeley, California and the surrounding environs. Skibbins is not merely passing through here. He knows this world down to its last nuance, and even if one is not enamored with the thought of a city being populated by a gang of arrested personalities, Skibbins will have you yearning to visit this place at least once in order to walk through Ritter's world. Ritter, a radical on the run, is quietly reading tarot fortunes on the weekend and keeping to the cracks on the sidewalk when the shoe of the past abruptly collides with the nose of the present. The shoe, in this case, is Ed Hightower, an old acquaintance of Ritter's who has another identity himself --- that of the leader of a Church of Satan. Someone has been killing off their members, and since the police haven't been much help, Hightower would like Ritter to conduct an unofficial investigation of his own. Ritter wants no part of it, but Hightower knows who he really is, and besides, Hightower has a twin sister, Veronique. Ritter and Veronique have a history that goes back to the 1960s and ties directly into the secret that Ritter has been carrying like dark and dirty baggage for decades. The fact that they were lovers has something to do not only with Ritter's reluctance but also his eventual acquiescence with respect to investigating the matter. That Ritter is already emotionally involved with another doesn't help matters either. Nonetheless Ritter, with some cyber-sleuthing help, quickly identifies three potential suspects, all of whom have sharp axes to grind with the church and the personality to carry it out. Ritter, however, suddenly finds himself in the crosshairs when he is unexpectedly framed for a new murder. His only hope is to quickly identify the real killer and acquire damning evidence against him. But how will he do this when he's on the run, hunted not only for what he didn't do

High Priestess is one roller coaster ride of a crime novel. Picture an updated Raymond Chandler on really effective psychotropic meds (when he remembers to take them), instead of booze, and you have the picture. David Skibbins's second effort bridges the gap between noir and more traditional mysteries. And the great writing insures fun for all. My only question is; how many cards left in a tarot deck? Because each one merits a book in this terrific new series.

Almost four decades ago, radical Warren Ritter escaped the Greenwich Village explosion that killed many of his colleagues. He literally went underground leaving behind the Weather Underground and made a fortune in the seventies with Microsoft stock. Now for fun, Ritter reads tarot cards from an outdoor table in Berkeley. Edward Hightower founder of the Fellowship of the Arising Night satanic worshippers tries to hire Warren to uncover who is killing his followers. Ritter says no so Hightower reveals that he knows the fortune teller's Manhattan past as he is the twin brother to Ritter's girlfriend from back then Veronique. Unable to refuse and not wanting to go into hiding, which is a young man's game, plus the bribe of meeting the daughter he never knew he conceived prove too much. Ritter, enlisting help from his girlfriend wheelchair-bound Sally McLaughlin and his friend Police Officer James McNally, investigates even as he turns to the Tarot Cards to guide him, but his inquiries make him a person of interest. HIGH PRIESTESS is an entertaining amateur sleuth tale starring a fascinating individual whose past has returned to haunt him. The story line is action-packed from the moment that Edward visits Ritter at his table and never slows down through several intriguing twists. The thriller reads at times much like its excellent predecessor (see EIGHT OF SWORDS) with the anti-hero struggling with manic-depression especially when he thinks back to his radical days. There is a final climatic spin that will stun the audience. No one reads the cards quite as well as Ritter does. Harriet Klausner