Twist of the Knife; Helltown

 

I love Anthony Horowitz's books. They're so clever. 

The fourth Horowitz/Hawthorne collaboration finds Anthony a suspect when a theater critic is brutally stabbed. She panned Anthony's new play on opening night, and she happened to be stabbed with a dagger that was gifted to everyone in the cast. Anthony was careless enough to leave his dagger in the theater (after getting his fingerprints all over it). Anthony is arrested and spends a night in jail being questioned. His old friend Hawthorne comes to get him out and the two of them race to figure out who killed Throsby the critic before Anthony ends up in serious trouble. It was fast paced and thrilling and as usual, I didn't see the end coming but thoroughly enjoyed it. 

I picked up "Helltown" because hey, true crime, not realizing until the very end that it was about the same killer talked about in a book I read almost two years ago, "The Babysitter". 

Tony Costa brutally butchered at least four young women in Cape Cod in 1968/69, burying their remains in the woods. His arrest was giant news, garnering the attention of two local authors, Norman Mailer and Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. 

Then the Manson murders happened in the summer of '69, and pushed Costa off the front page. The DA, who had dreams of making a political career out of prosecuting the Vampire of Cape Cod, ended up forgotten (that had more to do with how he handled Ted Kennedy's car accident, though). Costa ended up committing suicide after being sentenced to life in prison for his crimes. It was a truly heartbreaking story. Those poor young women suffered, and Costa put their loved ones through hell. Just sickening.