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Circling high over Rockefeller Center is a peregrine falcon, the most awesome of the flying predators. She awaits a signal from her falconer. It is given: the bird attacks, plummeting from the sky at nearly 200 miles an hour, striking a young woman and killing her instantly. So begins Peregrine, a chilling tale of obsession. By chance, newscaster Pamela Barrett witnesses the slaying. Her impassioned account of it on television that evening thrills the falconer, a brilliant madman who show more identifies with his deadly bird. He becomes fascinated with Pam and enmeshes her in a bizarre and deadly scheme even as she finds herself drawn to him by an erotic need she doesn't understand. As killing follows killing, the police and the media engage in cutthroat competition to find the murderer. Two falcons fight to the death above Central Park. Call girls, rich eccentrics, dealers in the black market for rare birds--all play their roles in this study of secret passion, desire, fulfillment, and ecstasy. show lessTags
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Member Reviews
It's very seldom that I give a book only one star (if I dislike it that much I normally won't finish it). However, having set myself the task of reading all the Edgar Best Novel winners, I finished this one regardless. It was icky. I'm not the biggest fan of thrillers in any case, I much prefer whodunnits. When the thriller genre is mixed with sadistic eroticism, sex scenes from a woman's point of view that were obviously written by a man, and general misogyny, count me out. I felt icky after reading this book. It's about a falconer who trains an extra-large peregrine falcon to kill humans on command. And of course, the humans are young career women. I would not recommend this book to anyone.
Peregrine is the first in William Bayer’s Janek series and my fifth read for the Edgar Awards Reading Challenge. A killer peregrine falcon is loose in New York City. A TV station races to maintain their scoop while the police race to figure out how to stop it. Is it acting alone? Has someone trained it to kill? All involved soon come to the conclusion that there is a falconer behind the falcon. As the reader, you know from the beginning what the truth is and just have to wait, biting your nails, hoping they figure it out in time.
The falconer becomes obsessed with newscaster Pamela Barrett and is determined to make her his own human falcon. As the killings continue, the TV station and the police's differing priorities clash and Pamela show more draws closer to true danger. The only hope is that police detective Frank Janek will discover the truth despite a lack of cooperation from Pamela and her TV colleagues.
Though Janek investigates the peregrine case, he felt almost incidental next to Pamela Barrett and the falconer. I found this interesting since he is the feature character of the series. Perhaps Bayer didn’t originally intend it as a series or maybe this is just his style. Regardless, Janek did peak my interest as a character without being front and center.
Peregrine really kept me on edge. In the end, though, I was a little weirded out by it. It was kind of like watching a super creepy episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. I like SVU, but there were some images in Peregrine that I wish weren’t in my head. If you’re sensitive to that sort of material, I wouldn’t recommend Peregrine despite it being a good mystery.
http://iubookgirl.blogspot.com/2011/06/review-peregrine.html show less
The falconer becomes obsessed with newscaster Pamela Barrett and is determined to make her his own human falcon. As the killings continue, the TV station and the police's differing priorities clash and Pamela show more draws closer to true danger. The only hope is that police detective Frank Janek will discover the truth despite a lack of cooperation from Pamela and her TV colleagues.
Though Janek investigates the peregrine case, he felt almost incidental next to Pamela Barrett and the falconer. I found this interesting since he is the feature character of the series. Perhaps Bayer didn’t originally intend it as a series or maybe this is just his style. Regardless, Janek did peak my interest as a character without being front and center.
Peregrine really kept me on edge. In the end, though, I was a little weirded out by it. It was kind of like watching a super creepy episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. I like SVU, but there were some images in Peregrine that I wish weren’t in my head. If you’re sensitive to that sort of material, I wouldn’t recommend Peregrine despite it being a good mystery.
http://iubookgirl.blogspot.com/2011/06/review-peregrine.html show less
Too dark
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Edgar Award
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Author Information
34+ Works 1,542 Members
Crime writer David Hunt is the pen name of William Bayer, a graduate of Phillips Exeter Academy and Harvard University. Bayer was a Foreign Service Officer with the U.S. Information Agency where he created many documentaries, two of which received Cine Golden Eagle awards. His feature film titled Mississippi Summer won Best Feature by a Director show more at the Chicago International Film Festival. Bayer has written several novels including In Search of a Hero, Switch, Wallflower, Mirror Maze, and Peregrine, which won the Edgar Award for Best Novel. He has also authored Breaking Through, Selling Out, and the nonfiction work Dropping Dead and Other Notes on Film Making. After Bayer moved to San Francisco, he began writing under David Hunt, his pen name. Among his most recent novels are The Magician's Tale and Trick of Light. (Bowker Author Biography) William Bayer's first novel, "In Search of a Hero" was published in 1962. He has since written two books of non-fiction and thirteen other novels, including the Edgar award-winning "Peregrine", and four subsequent mystery thrillers in which NYPD detective Frank Janek was the main character, among them the New York Times bestseller "Switch", which became the basis of the first of seven TV films in which Richard Crenna played Janek. "Pattern Crimes" was also a New York Times bestseller. Bayer's last two thrillers featured the color-blind photographer Kay Farrow and were written under the pen-name David Hunt: "The Magician's Tale", which was a New York Time Notable Book of the Year and won the Lambda Literacy Award for Best Mystery, and "Trick of Light". Bayer lives in San Francisco. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Awards and Honors
Awards
Series
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Peregrine
- Original publication date
- 1981
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 100
- Popularity
- 322,656
- Reviews
- 3
- Rating
- (2.54)
- Languages
- 5 — English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 15
- ASINs
- 3
