Night Mask: Jumping the Shark Artfully

To preface, the book I'm about to review is in no stretch of the imagination politically correct, restrained in its depiction of violence, or striving at all for realism in how law enforcement performs its job. Saying this, I am now going to review the insanity that is William W. Johnstone's Night Mask. In the likely case you don't know who William W. Johnstone is he was the author of numerous paperback original horror and thriller novels for Zebra Books during the horror boom of the 1980's through early 1990's. Johnstone is somewhat notorious for his extreme conservative viewpoint, worship of the second amendment, and over the top plot scenarios. This brings us to Night Mask. 

Zebra Books original 1994 paperback

Jumping on the serial killer bandwagon that would eventually kill the horror boom, Johnstone's Night Mask follows homocide detectives Leo Franks and Lani Prejean in their hunt for a predator who is using subliminal radio messages to lure his female victims to a grizzly death that culminates in the taking of each victims face as a trophy. You would think that would be enough of a plot to fill 350 pages by following the cat and mouse dynamic between detectives and their perpetrator. But you would be wrong because this is Johnstone we are talking about. As an author he seems to suffer from an inferiority complex that compels him to vomit ever increasing plot additions to amp his narrative. It's not enough we have a sexually sadistic serial killer but but he has a partner. Which the way he sets up the victim count makes sense. But then he adds that they are evil twin brothers who probably murdered their parents and on top of it somehow recruited other sexually sadistic individuals into a murder club across several states who are doing their own individual killings. Somehow the purported thousand something missing victims of these crimes went unnoticed until our intrepid heroes started digging deep in their case. What.

Detail from the back cover blurb. 

Now keep in mind this is just one side of the plot that this type of expanding crazy happens. He also works his "magic" on a plot thread involving the station manager of the local radio station that the detectives are investigating because a technician there catches the subliminal messaging in a commercial they air. Johnstone does the typical pit stop of the station manager gets framed by the killer but is not satisfied with this and ropes in the station manager's gay son and promiscuous daughter into the proceedings with the former becoming a victim and the latter involved in recruiting local kids into the serial killer's club. Not to mention the station manager himself is gifted his own off the wall narrative arc that I won't spoil here. Now if in any way, what I have described intrigues you and you can stomach violence and a certain amount of 1980's tinged misogyny by all means track this down. It's a fireworks laden hot mess that makes a game of jumping the shark but by god if you go in with the mindset you're witnessing a lost, Reagan era psycho thriller you will have some fun.