Who is Teddy Villaneuva? — Thomas Berger

In Who Is Teddy Villanova?, Mr. Berger turns for the first time to the private-eye thriller, as practiced by the masters Hammett and Chandler. The seedy office . . . the down-at-heel detective . . . and more.

In Who Is Teddy Villanova?, the cast of characters would seem taken from the roster of known sex offenders maintained by the police of every major American city -- the giant sadist Gus Bakewell; Donald Washburn II, perhaps the scion of a wealthy family, certainly an exhibitionist; quaint slumlord Sam Polidor; sleek, blonde Natalie Novotny, surely more than the airline stewardess she pretends to be; pneumatic Peggy Tumulty, who hails from Queens; Russel Wren, reluctant hero and garrulous narrator of the tale (in a rococo style reminiscent by turns of Thomas DeQuincey, Thomas Babington Macaulay, and Sir Thomas Malory, but nothing like that of Thomas Berger's previous work); a covey of depraved school girls; and a styful of undercover cops, to name only some of the principals. But over them all falls the evil shadow of the elusive Teddy Villanova, master criminal, underwear fetishist, archenemy of social meliorism, and, though presumably a foreigner, a habitué of a diseased Manhattan that Mr. Berger (who felt thoroughly at home there) drew from the living model before rusticating himself on an island in Maine.