The Reverend — David Robbins

Anguished voices gnaw through the subconscious of a schizophrenic like termites of the psyche. There is nowhere to turn as the commanding voices conjure up a will to murder. Such is the case with Reverend Thomas Barragan Deavers as he hears the controlling voice of his inner God.

By the time Thomas Barragan was an eight-year-old boy, his mother had instilled within him the emotional foundations of the daughter she would have preferred. Now, as an adult, and a Reverend, his female instincts have consumed him. Operating under his alter-ego, "Chamelea," he becomes a "liberator of souls." He has developed his talent as a hypnotist and his calling as a man of God to secure the trust of his female victims. He worms his way onto his female victim's insecurities to in order to mesmerize them--with the help of LSD-laced Communion wafers--into finding absolution to then die by his hand under his direction. It is, after all, God's will for them. By dispensing his own brand of last rites as predator and priest, they die in his embrace, as he feels the warmth of their departing souls enrich his own. Only in this way can The Reverend Barragan satisfy his--and his inner god's--compulsion to nurture his inherent and rapacious woman's soul. It is, after all, his god's will for him. He believes that "Chamelea" is pure.

The nascent forensic techniques available during the early 1960's are used to track Chamelea's killing path. Police Lt. Marty Cohansen and his former partner, Private Detective Raymond Nealy have taken up the challenge of finding the killer through old-school sleuthing and their gumshoe intuitions. The Reverend, as Chamelea, helps them along through the placement of his editorials in the New York Knickerbocker. It is a failing crime rag trying to make its comeback through the efforts of its hard-nosed Editor, Frank Malone, who will do just about anything to capture a story whether it is true or not. Two known victims have already surfaced. Will the killer be found before he strikes again?

"The Reverend" is also a story of the dysfunctional relationship between Reverend Barragan and his estranged twenty-one-year-old daughter, Regina. Having lost her mother to a suspicious drowning over ten years before, she and her father have distanced themselves from the ability to love. The Reverend is as driven to seek her out as she is compelled to escape her memory of him.

In that "The Reverend" is a psychological mystery-suspense novel set in New York City in 1963-64, several historical-cultural events meander through the background of the story. These include the rumblings of the Viet Nam War; the rise of The Beatles; the Ford Mustang; the 1964-65 New York World's Fair; the opulent Greenwich Village gay nightclub and the Upper West Side heterosexual singles bar scenes; the Reverend's "hunting ground."