Kinderman is one of my all-time favourite detectives. Slow, but with a certain creepiness to it. ( )

One of the cool quotes from the bible but the philosophizing over good and evil gets tedious when all the reader really wants is the devil to show up and scare the hell out of us. ( )

Another book from William Peter Blatty, following on from the story told in the Exorcist. Nowhere near as good as the first (but then what sequel ever is?) but entertaining nonetheless. ( )

Difficult to believe that Legion was written by the same person as The Exorcist - this is a pot boiler of the first order and lowest degree: it may be billed as 'the sequel' but other than author, venue and a few characters, it has little in common with the riveting original.
Lieutenant Kinderman, the wize-cracking thoughtful Jewish policeman who befriended Father Damien Karras in The Exorcist, can't seem to get enough of Jesuit priests, and is now friendly with Father Dyer.
The crucifixion of a deaf-mute boy, the murder of a priest in his confessional, the slaying of Father Dyer in hospital - all bare the hallmarks of the same murderer - Gemini, a serial killer who was shot dead over ten years previous.
Although the victims have the identical mutilations, fingerprints prove they cannot have been performed by the same person. Then Kinderman meets a patient in the 'closed' ward of the psychiatric hospital who not only claims to be the Gemini Killer but also has the exact appearance of the late Father Damien Karras...
The book worked neither as a straight-forward murder mystery nor as a horror thriller for me, and the endless philosophising - oi Vey! ( )

Possessed by sequelitis.

Unfortunately, Legion is pretty much a classic example of the sequel being not too flash compared to the rather entertaining original. Or, to put it more plainly, you really do not need to read this, but keen fans that find it for next to nothing in a second hand shop might want to take a look to fill in some of the goings on surrounding the milieu of the first book, or for their collection. Quite avoidable, indeed.

http://notfreesf.blogspot.com/2007/08... ( )