Best Selling Books by William Bayer

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 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.

"He spent hours drawing sketches of how she might be killed. And the more work he put into them the more exciting the idea became. And then he started following her and then he was caught up. And the more caught up he was the more definitely she was doomed, for once an idea took hold in him he felt compelled to carry it out. It was the Switch that made his crime a work of art... " At first the two killings seem unrelated. The lonely call girl murdered on New York City''s West Side had never met the prim schoolteacher slain across town in the far safer preserve of the city''s Upper East Side. But someone has decapitated them both and switched their heads: a deed that is apparently its own motive, a crime as pointless as it was perfectly executed. Detective Frank Janek immediately knows that he has entered the realm of a lethal madness. Middle-aged, divorced, a man centered solely on his work, Janek is practiced in piercing the minds of the criminals he pursues. In the absence of clues from the killer, he has only the awful symmetry of the crime to work with, only his own finely honed intuition. "This was a crime conceived in the shadows," he thinks, "There was precision in it, and passion. Concentrated rage and a love of order. A need to beautify. Even some strange, unfathomable, as yet uncatalogued species of love." The challenge—to become as precise, as creative, as cold as his prey-begins to take its toll. The tenuous psychological thread leads Janek back into the unsettled past—not only the killer''s but his own. His own passion and rage and unresolved love. The love he bore for the man who trained him-a retired cop whose apparent suicide he has shied from investigating too closely, the passion for justice that has made him a marked man within the police fraternity. The rage he feels at ancient crimes that have finally burst into full and terrifying flower. And most of all, the new love he feels for the mysterious woman in whom all these strands of the past seem to converge. It is Janek''s love for Caroline that leads him at last to a blinding vision of the purpose behind the grisly double homicide. Too late, he realizes that the case of "Switched Heads" may only be the bait.... Praise for Switch: I am very impressed. Switch is superior in characterization, movement, tension, the quality of the writing and the a mind of the writer. William Bayer goes right on my "look for list" —John D. MacDonald "The crime is dazzling, the action fast paced, and there are good insights into police techniques and the police mind." —Robert Daley "Switch is a novel in which the grit and madness of New York are palpable. As well as engrossing the reader utterly, it does high honor to the grand tradition of the American psychological thriller, and despite the riveting nature of its central act of horror, it also traces an exhilarating love affair between two bloodied but triumphantly humane survivors of the city''s attrition." —Thomas Keneally "Switch has the stunning intensity of The First Deadly Sin, and I can''t think of a higher compliment." —Mary Higgins Clark

"One hot summer afternoon a quarter century ago, a wealthy socialite and her young lover, a private-school teacher, were gunned down in a cheap motel room on the outskirts of the Midwestern city of Calista. Now, forensic sketch artist David Weiss has returned to his hometown to cover a routine celebrity murder trial for ABC."--Jacket.

Tangier, a sweeping novel of romance and intrigue set in a fabled North African resort, may remind readers of the Alexandria Quartet. In this book Tangier is more than just a place; it is a city of unholy loves. Titled Europeans, Moroccan hustlers, aging former Nazis, decadents of every sort play out their rituals, competing for stunning lovers and social power. Their schemes and passions are a subject of fascination to the hero of the book, a brilliant young police inspector. But even as he is fascinated he is also repelled, searching always to understand the privileged foreign colony, to unravel its weave of secrets. He finds the key, finally, in the person of a beautiful Eurasian woman, whose own mysterious past he manages to unveil. Through her eyes he comes to see Tangier in a new way. Sustained by her love he rediscovers the city and finds a different role in it for himself. Against the drama of this love story other characters emerge: An America Consul becomes embroiled in an affair with his Vice-Consul''s wife. A retired British character actor strives to preserve his dignity as his friends betray him and he feels an intimation of his death. A Canadian gossip columnist struggles not to lose himself in the gay world of Tangier. There is a young Frenchman corrupted by his love for an older woman; a radical Arab surgeon; a fifth-rate Soviet spy-a "burnt-out case"; squabbling writers; cruel social arbiters; a male prostitute named "Pumpkin Pie". Watched closely by the police inspector as they slip in and out of each others'' lives, these and other characters ignore the storm that gathers slowly above their town. In the end it sweeps them up with dizzying force. Tangier is revealed in a violent and dazzling finale.

(Limelight). "A hip compendium of cinema savvy ... perhaps the most practical battle manual available to the young filmmaker." Newsweek

In this multi-layered psychological mystery, photographer Jason Poe is transfixed by a disturbing set of murals he encounters in the attic of an abandoned house, and resolves to uncover the secret behind them. "The murals hit me hard. First came terror, then awe. It was only after I’d taken them in that I began to feel their immense power." Jason Poe, a former war photographer, has been breaking into abandoned houses for an art project to document what previous tenants have left behind. One night he finds more than expected when he ascends to an attic and is confronted by a haunting set of murals. The murals cover all four walls of the cramped space and hypnotise Jason. Convinced there’s an important story behind them, he embarks upon a quest to identify their creator and uncover their meaning. To do so Jason recruits several friends, including Joan Nguyen, a reporter for Calista Times-Dispatch. As the team delve deeper they uncover a mystery involving accusations of satanism, police corruption, a scandal involving a wealthy Calista family, a series of contemporary arson attacks . . . and an enigmatic patient in a Swiss psychiatric clinic.

Intricate thriller.

New York Police Lieutenant Frank Janek struggles to find who murdered his goddaughter and others in a series of vicious murders.

1882: Lou Andreas-Salome appears with Friedrich Nietzche in a photograph. Thirty years later, a student presents Salome with his own drawing of the photograph. Present Day: Tess''s life is put in jeopardy when the previous owner of her new Californian loft is found dead, and she uncovers a link to the Luzern photograph and the 1913 drawing.

The ritual was always the same. First, she would visit the abandoned mirror maze from her broken childhood. Then, she would drive into the city, pick up a stranger, drug, rob and humiliate him. Now one of her marks has been found murdered. And Detective Frank Janek must enter the labyrinth of a woman''s rage--to find the reflection of a killer''s wrath.

60 films deserved to be called great.

In 1903, a tall woman with flashing Tartar eyes was the talk of military circles, newspaper offices and salons. Her name was Isabelle Eberhardt, and the life she actually led made her justifiably the object of the most scandalous gossip in Paris as well as in North Africa. This compelling novel, a fictionalized biography, tells her story––the story of a brave, self-destructive and sensual being with an irrepressible rage to live. Isabelle came to Tunis when she was 17, longing for fame as an author and discovering that her life could be the inspiration for her art. She converted to Islam and dressed as a man chiefly because it allowed her to wander freely and taste the delicacies of a forbidden existence. Her brief life encompassed an enormous range of experience. She joined a mystic religious sect and was nearly assassinated because of it, went to trial over the scandal and was forced to leave the country. She followed the French army into the Sahara as a journalist, insulted the great and the famous, spent sleepless nights in rapturous mystical prayer. When she died, at the age of 27, she was reputed to have slept with most of the Foreign Legion. Isabelle''s goal was to rediscover herself through her excesses, her fears and her joys, so that perhaps one day she might rend the veil which hid from her the secrets of eternity. This fascinating novel about her life proves admirably that the best of Isabelle Eberhardt lay in her energy and determination to dive into the midst of maelstrom and ride out the fury of her existence.

" Il avait conscience de s''exprimer comme un fanatique et d''en avoir également l''aspect physique, avec son visage émacié, ses cheveux hirsutes, son corps maigre, son costume noir, ses bottines en cuir repoussé, sa cravate en corde maintenue en place par une tête de bélier en argent. Kelly l''avait qualifié de " superflic ", mais ça faisait des années qu''il n''avait pas respecté le code de conduite d''un bon flic. Il était devenu autre chose : un chasseur de Satan. " Dan Caponigro, surnommé Cap, traque les satanistes. Un jour, après une de ses conférences, un jeune policier lui soumet le cas d''un assassinat présentant des caractéristiques occultes. Dans une église de campagne isolée, fréquentée par une communauté noire restreinte, le pasteur a trouvé un homme nu, de race blanche, d''une vingtaine d''années, suspendu par un pied à la traverse d''une grande croix de bois dressée derrière l''autel. Sous la tête de la victime, un pentacle tracé sur le dallage avec son sang. Ce signe bien particulier ramène Cap dix ans en arrière, au meurtre de sa propre fille. Les assassins n''ont jamais été arrêtés ; mais Cap croit retrouver leur signature dans ce nouveau crime, mis en scène comme une figure du tarot. D''autres meurtres viennent confirmer l''hypothèse de Cap, qui se lance sur la piste des tueurs. Dans sa quête, il croisera un couple de journalistes, des " tarotmaniaques ", des " marchands de sorcellerie ", avant d''affronter les " sorciers " qui fabriquent des jeux satanistes et jouent avec des cartes noires. William Bayer possède plus de quatre cents jeux de tarot. Il a tenté de restituer certaines des nombreuses sortes de lectures qu''on peut obtenir ", tout en sachant " qu''il y a autant d''approches du tarot que de gens qui possèdent un jeu ". Un thriller profondément original qui ouvre les portes d''un monde fascinant.