The perfect setting
for suspense

By Diane Prokop
Times Staff Writer

Richard Montanari is getting to know Philadelphia pretty well. Merciless is the Ohio native’s third suspense novel set in our fair city. Translated into 15 languages, the other books in the series — Rosary Girls and Skin Gods — are also international bestsellers.
From a warehouse in Manayunk, to the Police Administration Building at Eighth and Race streets, to the home of next of kin in Bustleton, a storefront church on Allegheny Avenue, along the banks of the Schuylkill River and to Finnigan’s Wake in Northern Liberties for a Philadelphia police officer’s retirement party — Montanari has launched two books there and plans to launch Merciless at Finnigan’s Wake this fall — the author takes readers on a ride through the City of Brotherly Love.
While Cleveland may be the ill-placed home of the Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Fame, Montanari set his thrillers in the Quaker City.
"Why? Philly is much bigger than Cleveland and has much more of everything. I have family there. I’ve been there a million times. It’s a big huge canvas," Montanari said by phone from his Ohio office last week.
Were it not for state Superior Court Judge Seamus McCaffery, whom he met and subsequently forged a connection with in the Philadelphia Police Department, and the openness of the department, the series would not exist.
"If that hadn’t happened, I couldn’t have or wouldn’t have done it," he said.
Curiously enough, brotherly love does figure ever-so- subtly into the plot line of the suspense novel, whose protagonists include Irish cop Kevin Byrne from South Philly and Jessica Balzano, a 30-something female homicide detective who lives in the Northeast’s Lexington Park neighborhood.
In addition to dealing with the horrors of a psychopathic serial killer, the detectives grow and change and deal with their own demons along the way.
The protagonists are composites of cops Montanari has met along the way. Inspiration for his peripheral characters such as Detective Josh Bontrager, who has heard every Amish joke ever told, is also plentiful in Philadelphia.
A page-turner, Montanari’s scenes are often dark and have a certain cinematic quality to them. In fact, in his 2006 novel Skin Gods, the author recreates murder scenes from the silver screen.
In Merciless, he creates that surreal effect at a crime scene where a victim is posed facing the Schuylkill River.
Jessica walked back to the riverbank. There were no footprints on the frozen ground near the river’s edge; no blood splatter or trail. A slight trickle of blood from the victim’s legs etched the mossy stone wall in a pair of thin, deep scarlet tendrils...
"I’m a big film nut," Montanari said. "I used to be a film critic [and] think in cinematic terms. I do have to see the scene in my head," he said.
Sometimes, however, the scenes find him. Montanari was riding his bike when one hit him — the Shawmont Waterworks in Upper Roxborough.
"It was a Gershwin rhapsody moment. It was a stunning thing, twenty-five feet high, with gnarled branches (and) weeds. (It was) a hidden strange little place — a crime scene waiting to happen," Montanari said.
Indeed.
"At night it was all but an urban mausoleum, a dark and forbidding haven for drug deals, clandestine unions of sorts," the author wrote in Merciless.
You can check out photos of his novels’ crime scenes on his Web site, www.richardmontanari.com/gallery.htm
His fans in the United Kingdom are very interested in Montanari’s crime scenes and in Philadelphia. One-third of his fan mail comes from the U.K., with half of the writers asking about Philadelphia, according to the author.
Montanari expects the Brits share an affinity for the gritty and dark, as evidenced by the BBC’s Wired, Cracker and Prime Suspect.
"I’ve always had a really big thing for British crime television. You can get away with stuff on the BBC. British TV is pretty dark," he said.
"(Philadelphia) is mysterious to folks around the world and looked on with great interest," Montanari said, adding his amazement at its great reception around the world.
"It’s so gratifying to see one’s own name show up in another language," he said.
The author is hard at work on his yet untitled fourth installment of the series. This thriller will take readers to the city’s mysterious magic community in the 1930s and ’40s and introduce some historical characters along the way.
Montanari’s other books include Kiss of Evil, Deviant Way and the Violet Hour. A screenwriter and essayist as well, Montanari’s work has also appeared in the Chicago Tribune, Detroit Free Press and Cleveland Plain Dealer. ••
Reporter Diane Prokop can be reached at 215-354-3036 or dprokop@phillynews.com