Dimiter

by William Peter Blatty

Overview

William Peter Blatty has thrilled generations of readers with his iconic mega-bestseller The Exorcist. Now Blatty gives us Dimiter, a riveting story of murder, revenge, and suspense. Laced with themes of faith and love, sin and forgiveness, vengeance and compassion, it is a novel in the grand tradition of Morris West's The Devil's Advocate and the Catholic novels of Graham Greene.

Dimiter opens in the world's most oppressive and isolated totalitarian state: Albania in the 1970s. A prisoner suspected of being an enemy agent is held by state security. An unsettling presence, though subjected to unimaginable torture he maintains an eerie silence. He escapes—-and on the way to freedom, completes a mysterious mission. The prisoner is Dimiter, the American "agent from Hell."

The scene shifts to Jerusalem, focusing on Hadassah Hospital and a cast of engaging, colorful characters: the brooding Christian Arab police detective, Peter Meral; Dr. Moses Mayo, a troubled but humorous neurologist; Samia, an attractive, sharp-tongued nurse; and assorted American and Israeli functionaries and hospital staff. All become enmeshed in a series of baffling, inexplicable deaths, until events explode in a surprising climax.

Told with unrelenting pace, Dimiter's compelling, page-turning narrative is haunted by the search for faith and the truths of the human condition. Dimiter is William Peter Blatty's first full novel since the 1983 publication of Legion.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250240057
Publisher:	Tor Publishing Group
Publication date:	03/29/2011
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	498,079
Product dimensions:	4.25(w) x 7.00(h) x 0.75(d)

About the Author

William Peter Blatty, the writer of numerous novels and screenplays, is best known for his mega-bestselling novel The Exorcist, deemed by the New York Times Book Review to be "as superior to most books of its kind as an Einstein equation is to an accountant's column of figures." An Academy Award winner for his screenplay for The Exorcist, Blatty is not only the author of one of the most terrifying novels ever written, but, paradoxically, also cowrote the screenplay for the hilarious Inspector Clouseau film, A Shot in the Dark. New York Times reviewers of his early comic novels noted, "Nobody can write funnier lines than William Peter Blatty," describing him as "a gifted virtuoso who writes like S. J. Perelman." Blatty lives with his wife and a son in Maryland.

Editorial Reviews

Dimiter is an intelligent, tightly wound, suspenseful novel. One can only hope Blatty will publish another sometime soon.” —USA Today

“A beautifully written, haunting tale of vengeance, spiritual searching, loss, and love.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Gripping and intelligent, Dimiter is part detective story and part religious thriller in the grand tradition of The Name of the Rose.” —Allan Folsom, New York Times bestselling author

From the Publisher

Blatty fans looking for straight-up horror in the vein of The Exorcist will be disappointed, but those with broader tastes will find this a beautifully written, haunting tale of vengeance, spiritual searching, loss, and love. In 1973 Albania, Colonel Vlora (aka “the Interrogator”), the head of a team of torturers, questions “the Prisoner,” who the reader later learns is Paul Dimiter, “an American clandestine agent referred to in some quarters of the world as 'legendary,’ while in others as 'the agent from hell.’ ” (Rumor has it Dimiter poisoned Ho Chi Minh while the Vietnamese leader was visiting Albania shortly before his death in 1969.) Dimiter escapes to Jerusalem, where he encounters a number of engaging characters, including a doctor of neurology, a sharp-tongued nurse, and a grief-stricken Israeli policeman. The complicated plot confounds until the isolated pieces of the psychological puzzle that’s Dimiter match up and fall into place, revealing surprising truths. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

From the author of The Exorcist (1971), a halting, unfocused thriller about a series of mysterious events in Jerusalem. Blatty begins with a numbing, cluttered and confusing prologue, set against the political intrigue and violence in Albania in the 1970s. In a series of sessions, some, for no clear reason, reproduced as transcripts, a man identified as "the Interrogator" attempts to break down "the Prisoner." The Prisoner remains tight lipped until the Interrogator uses sodium pentothal to get him to talk. In a mysterious feat "never quite understood" the Prisoner takes out his guards and escapes. Three days later, on a Sunday, he appears before seven men in a barn. Back at his office, the Interrogator reflects on his Prisoner, now identified as Dimiter, "the agent from Hell." Blatty thereupon shifts to Jerusalem and Hadassah Hospital, scene of a murder, the miraculous recovery of a two-year-old from cancer and, "at the end of the hall, something black and quick." For good measure, there's also mention of a case of leprosy and, later, the discovery of a body in the tomb of Christ. The narrative mostly turns into a rather unremarkable police procedural as police detective Peter Meral (perhaps the only character with any dimension) takes on the case of American novelist Eddie Shore. Shore, hospitalized for food poisoning, dies suspiciously of cardiac arrest. Then Moses Mayo, a neurologist at Hadassah, dies, and Meral is convinced he was murdered. Periodic references to Dimiter promise to draw together the diffuse plot strands, with Blatty periodically breaking in to suggest that all will come together as he ends several chapters on a portentous note: " ‘The only cover you can blow now isthe lid on his coffin.' Which, in its way, would later prove to be prophetic." Cue rain and wind and dreams about Christ's resurrection from the tomb to add a quasi-mysterious, quasi-spiritual overlay. A holding pattern that never wants to end.

Kirkus Reviews

With his latest novel, Blatty proves not only that he still can write compelling prose nearly 40 years after his acclaimed EXORCIST but also that he makes a fine narrator. His deep, raspy voice provides a nice “jagged edge” for this psychological thriller, which delicately interweaves a string of events that eventually come together—from a man being tortured by the Albanian government in the 1970s to a growing number of deaths at a Hadassah hospital in Jerusalem that is filled with people of diverse ethnic and cultural identities. Blatty uses pauses to stretch out the more chilling moments of the narrative. While his female character voices aren't entirely believable, they don’t distract the listener from the story. L.E. © AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine

JUNE 2010 - AudioFile