In 1993, Lars, handsome with thick, blond hair, has girlfriend problems. He’s approaching forty. His old girlfriend has rented a room in the basement of his Minneapolis house. His new, twenty-something girlfriend is noncommittal. Among those invited to his birthday party – a big bash – are members of his bridge-playing group. This includes Dale, the wealthy owner of a Lake Minnetonka estate and frequent host of bridge games.
Dale is an odd person. He has a scar on his face and has trouble speaking. His mother is a post-WWII German émigré. A Nazi-sympathizer, she molded her only child in that ideology.
Lars has no idea Dale perceives him as the Aryan ideal. Nor that Dale covets Lars’s niece, a fourteen year-old gifted gymnast. He fantasizes kidnapping her.
Will Dale’s white supremacist accomplice, Jimmy, help him carry out the kidnapping? Will they be stopped by Sergeant Turner, a black cop? Will Turner’s mastery of police protocol help Lars open his eyes to the truth about Dale? Will Lar’s epiphany come in time to save his niece from Dale’s morbid design?
This intricately plotted mystery thriller has more than a few surprises before its dramatic, taut, suspenseful conclusion.
Peter Erickson on https://www.amazon.com wrote:A man obsessed with Nazis, especially Ernst Rohm, assorted white supremacists, and some very troubled women mash together at a birthday party rife with sexual tension. Dismembered limbs appear as calling cards and a young girl is kidnapped by the worst of the psychos. The story is unrelentingly bleak, perverted, and terrifying, with only partial salvation at the end. Where can we place this novel on the genre spectrum? Probably psychological suspense, but it borders on horror, in the style of the nineties movie ‘Se7en’ [Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt.] Smith’s work is also reminiscent of another Minnesota author, Brian Freeman, whose soul-crushing books are bloated with tragic, disturbed characters.
You’ve been warned—this book will grind you down, and there’s no recovery until the very end.
M. Gibbs on https://www.amazon.com wrote:Stadelheim is a character driven mystery thriller, at times violent, with elements of obsession, lust, Nazi phantasies, and a stream-of-consciousness mixing of past and present torments. There is an array of interacting characters, made credible and complex through Smith’s careful building of them, the book’s strongest point in my opinion. The characters were not only believable, but I felt each could inhabit a novel of their own. This story takes these people and weaves them to the book’s unpredictable climax. With Smith’s command of character, I believe he could write in whatever genre he chooses and may find there a path to further expression of his clearly evident talents.
Once I started reading Stadelheim Tower of Torment, it was extremely hard to put the book down. The last chapter had me on the edge of my seat wondering what was going to happen. The book hooked me immediately. The cast of characters can be described as eccentric, quirky, terrifying, creepy, amusing and familiar. In this crime thriller, the author engages the reader to experience the story’s progression from a slow burning tension to a high fever frenzy which ends with a powerful crescendo. The ending leaves open the possibility for a sequel. For a first novel, this author knocked it out of the park!
In 1993, Lars, handsome with thick, blond hair, has girlfriend problems. He’s approaching forty. His old girlfriend has rented a room in the basement of his Minneapolis house. His new, twenty-something girlfriend is noncommittal. Among those invited to his birthday party – a big bash – are members of his bridge-playing group. This includes Dale, the wealthy owner of a Lake Minnetonka estate and frequent host of bridge games.
Dale is an odd person. He has a scar on his face and has trouble speaking. His mother is a post-WWII German émigré. A Nazi-sympathizer, she molded her only child in that ideology.
Lars has no idea Dale perceives him as the Aryan ideal. Nor that Dale covets Lars’s niece, a fourteen year-old gifted gymnast. He fantasizes kidnapping her.
Will Dale’s white supremacist accomplice, Jimmy, help him carry out the kidnapping? Will they be stopped by Sergeant Turner, a black cop? Will Turner’s mastery of police protocol help Lars open his eyes to the truth about Dale? Will Lar’s epiphany come in time to save his niece from Dale’s morbid design?
This intricately plotted mystery thriller has more than a few surprises before its dramatic, taut, suspenseful conclusion.