Nocturne for Madness

by Robb T. White

Here we encounter the controlled madness of two men, one a former cop, the other a misfit and killer of women. The ex-cop Thomas Haftmann, formerly of Cleveland Homicide, is recently divorced and working as a private investigator in the resort town of Jefferson-on-the-Lake. Barely surviving financially, and haunted by his own twin demons of gambling and alcohol, Haftmann gets swept up in the statewide manhunt for a killer who meets women on swingers’ Internet sites and kills them. Ohio police are finding headless bodies displayed in bizarre poses. Sensationalized in the tabloid press as the “Jack-in-the-Box Killer for leaving severed heads at murder scenes, Lonnie Dale Nelson carries with him a voice in his head (his “angel) that grows stronger as his madness intensifies over the course of the year-long manhunt. And Haftmann’s own mental instability is accelerating as the trail leading to Nelson grows warmer.

374 pages, Paperback

Published January 9, 2016

About the author

Pseudonym of Robert White.

Robb T. White was born and raised in Ashtabula, Ohio. A lifelong reader of crime fiction, he published his first story featuring Thomas Haftmann, private investigator, in Gary Lovisi's "Hardboiled" magazine. Since then, he has published several dozen crime stories, a dozen more Haftmann stories, many collected in "Thomas Haftmann, Private Eye: The Short Stories" (2017), a collection of mainstream stories in 2013 and three more Haftmann novels: "Haftmann's Rules," "Saraband for a Runaway," and "Nocturne for Madness." Two other non-Haftmann crime novels are "When You Run with Wolves" (2013) and "Waiting on a Bridge of Maggots" (2015). An ebook novel, "Special Collections," won the New Rivers Electronic Book Competition in 2014. His latest novel is being released by Crowood Press in the U.K. in October 2017.

Reviews

[David Fuqua]

This novel by Robert White appears to be a "origins" story of his recurrent character, chronically down-on-his-luck Thomas Haftman. This gripping novel finds Haftman in his run-down northern Ohio milieu dealing with the scum of society and his own regrets and failures. He is no stereotype private eye and a good window into the life of a tortured soul. White's latest novel is a great read and worth the reader's investment. I hope to see more of Thomas in the future.