Mirror Maze

The Third Book in the Janek Series

De: William Bayer

Narrado por: Jeffrey Kafer

A secret hall of mirrors, a labyrinth of fear: Janek returns in a hypnotic thriller...

Nobody writes better psychological thrillers than William Bayer. And no character in contemporary crime fiction is as compelling or complex as Lieutenant Frank Janek of the N.Y.P.D. Now Bayer and Janek are back-in a brilliant novel of terror and excitement.

A beautiful young woman meets her latest "pickup" in a Manhattan hotel bar and goes back with him to his room, where she drugs him, robs him, and humiliates him. Several hours later, the "mark" is found dead, the mysterious young woman is wanted for the murder, and Janek and his team of detectives are assigned to the case. Simultaneously, Janek becomes involved in the reopening of a grisly society-murder investigation that has plagued Internal Affairs for nine years. As he sets out to solve both puzzles, the present and past eerily dovetail, culminating with a deadly battle in a secret mirror maze hidden beneath a "ghost" amusement park.

Mirror Maze sinuously leads the listener through one maze after another - literal, theoretical, and psychological. As with the other best-selling Janek novels, Switch and Wallflower, Mirror Maze is a superb police procedural, tense and violent, as well as a thoughtful examination of the blurring of illusion and reality, guilt and innocence.

©1995 William Bayer (P)2012 David N. Wilson

Great story but ending is a little strange

Gets you interested really quickly. A very well-crafted detective yarn. Ending is very suspenseful and good but events related after case is over are strange and a little disappointing, at least to me. Detective’s voice a little overwrought by narrator

Dated Psychosexual Noir

Janek is back with some gnarly weirdness and cryptic mysteries. Janek was introduced in 1984 and wonderfully prototypical in some ways. Mirror Maz has an interesting antihero who might risk overshadowing Janek. I lost the thread with Janek; I really liked Switch but did not read Wallflower (book 2) before Mirror Maze (book 3, here) and find Mirror Maze to be just ok. It has the same delicious hard boiled elements and a bend towards abstract with a psychosexual mirror element but not quite as atmospheric or punchy at the first. Trigger warning for child abuse; used thematically to explore guilt and agency but hard to justify today. The text here does something interesting in having several subplots that take a back seat to character with some of the reveals feeling almost token like resolving things gently and sketched in a manner that embellishes the characters without really following the plot much. Stuff like a feel the bad guys who work in the background (maybe this is part of after the fact mystery solving) but it sometimes felt a little unsatisfying and prone to Janek hero worship. Janek ends up in Cuba which feels out of his element and riding a few plots a bit more tangent at first glance. I didnt feel like the elements really worked together as well.

Twists and turns!

Well-written. Held my attention throughout.

Jeffrey Kafer did a good job narrating.

I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

Good

Frank Janek of Homicide has meet a psychological person, she has a ritual, the one that has turned deadly. To find her, he explores giving us a page turner plot. Well done as was the narration. Given audio for my voluntary review

An entertaining read

So, first, this is a series and it MUST be read in order. I failed to do that, and therefore found myself totally bewildered by the whole Mendoza plotline. Not the book's fault, but mine.

The main story in this book, though, it's an interesting one, although at times it's really slow and becomes a bit pretentious language-wise with a constant repetition of the word mirror without delving into the metaphor.

Nevertheless, it is entertaining, and you'll probably get a lot more of enjoyment beginning from the beginning, not as I did. /0\

Now, regarding the narration, Jeffrey Kafer does an excellent reading, but not a good narration. There is a lack of emotion to it that borders the monotone and, at least for me, detracts from the story.