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Show of Evil
Rising Sun
Dark Lady
Eureka
Dr. Death (Alex Delaware Novels (Paperback))
Reckless Eyeballin' (Starletta Duvall Mysteries)
Demolition Angel
Every Breath You Take (Laura Principal Mysteries (Paperback))
All the Dead Were Strangers (Conrad Voort Novels (Hardcover))
Scene of Crime
Death in Holy Orders: An Adam Dalgliesh Mystery
Lover Boy and Bad Girl
None of Your Business
Ransom Unpaid (Worldwide Library Mysteries)
Singing the Sadness (Worldwide Library Mysteries)
Nobody Dies in a Casino (Worldwide Library Mysteries)
Murder in Central Park (Bill Donovan Mysteries (Paperback))
A Fool and His Honey
Questionable Remains
Five Card Stud (Worldwide Library Mysteries)
Skulls of Sedona (Worldwide Library Mysteries)
Six-Pound Walleye (Jake Hines Mysteries (Paperback))
Murder on the Waterfront (Bill Donovan Mysteries (Paperback))
How Still We See Thee Lie: The Christmas Bonus/A Merry Little Christmas/Holidays Can Be Murder/Too Many Santas (Worldwide Library Mysteries)
A Romantic Way to Die (Worldwide Library Mysteries)

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A Good Work of Fiction
A work of Masterpiece
Great sequel to Primal Fear
The long arms of a psycho killer
Whether legal thriller or mystery, more show than substance

Show of Evil
William Diehl
Manufacturer: Ballantine Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback

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Primal Fear
The Hunt
Thai Horse
Eureka
Sharky's Machine

ASIN: 034537536X
Release Date: 1996-05-01

Book Description

It begins with a shocking, unsolved murder. In small town in southern Illinois, the butchered body of Linda Balfour--with a cryptic code printed in blood on the back of her head--forges a gruesome link to the brutal murder of Bishop Rushman, the beloved Chicago clergyman who had been dismembered years before by the angelic-looking altar boy, Aaron Stampler. The same Aaron Stampler whom defense attorney Martin Vail saved from the electric chair...

Now Vail is Chicago's chief prosecutor, facing the nightmare of his life. If Stampler has been locked away in a high-security institution for the past ten years, how could he have killed Linda Balfour? Then another altar boy turns up dead with a similar inscription in blood on the back of his head. If Aaron Stampler isn't committing these killings, who is? Martin Vail's career--maybe even his life--hangs on the answer...

Customer Reviews:

A Good Work of Fiction.......2004-01-08

This was the first time I read Diehl,s work. I thought it was suspenseful and it kept my interest. The author left a lot of room for a sequel. It is worth the time.

A work of Masterpiece.......2004-01-05

I encountered this book by simple and plain old luck. In my college reading class my Teacher Mrs. Hamilton was having a book sale of pre used books that where from her own collection. These book's where truly a good bargain so I didn't let the opportunity pass. So I looked over and glanced at some of the books on the rack for sale, at first it didn't seem there was anything of interest for me to purchase. To my surprise however I ran across book that seemed intriguing so I picked it up and read the back. To be truthfully honest at first I didn't realize what it was until I completed reading the back of the book. After realizing what it was I didn't hesitate for a second to purchase it. While reading Show of Evil I received a lot of joy and ended my curiosity of what happened after Primal Fear. The book was Excellent and well written and kept me suspense from beginning to end. Thus I recommend this novel for all to read

Great sequel to Primal Fear.......2003-09-12

A one-two punch with Primal Fear. Make sure you read the super Primal Fear first then enjoy the continued story...it just keeps getting better. Left the door open for a continuance with another unexpected ending. I hope there is more!!!!

The long arms of a psycho killer.......2003-08-01

Fast forward ten years from Diehl's excellent novel, Primal Fear. Main character Martin Vail previously a premier, unrelenting, sharkish Chicago defense attorney has undergone a metamorphosis. Disillusioned soon after his most famous and demanding litigation, the Aaron Stampler murder trial, Vail chucked it all. He signed on as chief prosecutor and assistant D.A, of Chicago. Vail recruited a carnivorous band of legal eagles he affectionately calls the Wild Bunch to handle the plethora of crimes passing through the D.A.'s office. They are presently up to their necks with investigations when a series of brutal crimes become uncovered that have similarities to the Stampler case.

Aaron Stampler, a country bumpkin from rural Kentucky with a genius IQ was serving as an altar boy to Chicago archbishop Rushman. The exalted cleric was actually a closet pedophile and Stampler brutally slashed him to death as well as two other altar boys. Vail defended him and using a strategy based on Stampler having a multiple personality disorder succeeded in saving his life. Stampler was remanded to a mental facility for the criminally insane where he has been incarcerated for 10 years. When several murders crop up with the same M.O. as the Rushman murder the fur really starts to fly in the D.A.'s office.

It seems as if Stampler is somehow involved in this latest rash of killings but how can he be if he is interred? Vail with the help of his Wild Bunch and Jane Venable, former asst. D.A. and prosecutor of the Stampler case and now corporate lawyer commence investigating these horrific crimes.

Diehl does a masterful job in expertly picking up his Primal Fear story 10 years down the road. Show of Evil is a fast moving, hard hitting and worthy sequel.

Whether legal thriller or mystery, more show than substance.......2002-09-24

"Show of Evil" is the sequel to the novel "Primal Fear". In that first book, the morally ambiguous defense attorney Mart Vail saves from an almost certain conviction a young man who murders Chicago's archbishop. In the face of an almost certain conviction, Vail managed to squeeze out an insanity plea based on the youthful defendant's split personality - normally he's the sweet and unassuming Aaron Stampler. When aroused or angered, he becomes the cruel and sadistic Roy, neither one able to recall what happens when the other takes over. At the end of "Primal" Vail is convinced that Aaron/Roy's disorder is invented - but by then, he's won and Aaron/Roy is institutionalized and immunized from prosecution. "Show picks up 10 years later. Vail is now Chicago's No. 2 prosecutor, the head of a gang of rapacious homicide ADA's who show no mercy. While his office juggles two high-profile homicides, Vail is forced to confront the impending release of Aaron. Hardly convinced as his doctors are that Aaron/Roy is cured (and has shed both previous egos for a new honest one named "Ray"), and learning of a string of copycat murders in which Aaron's former friends have become victims, Vail is determined to crack Aaron/Roy/Ray.

This was a pretty shallow story - with Aaron barely making a dent in a plot that spends much of its time concerned with the two other murders being prosecuted by Vail's office. The events of "Primal" mostly arise as a consequence of "Show"'s focusing on Vail's renewed romance with Jane Venable, the prosecutor in "Primal" and - to complete the reversal of roles here - the defense counsel in one of Vail's homicide cases. (When the hints prove insufficient, Diehl just drops Aaron's name in spots of narrative that have nothing to do with the case). Finding improbably close links between Aaron's handiwork and that of a serial killer who claims two of Aaron's former friends, Vail struggles to tie the murders to a man who's been institutionalized for a decade. Diehl, like Aaron, doesn't know when to leave well-enough alone and, once Aaron returns to the novel, he quickly and unceremoniously spills the beans. Suffice it to say that those looking for a real twist will go hungry (I thought Aaron, Venable and Vail would team up and implicate a high-level Chicago fixture much as they cooked the archbishop in "Primal", or otherwise link the copycat crimes to the other seemingly unrelated ones ala "Hollywood Confidential"). The mystery of Aaron's power to manipulate from beyond the walls of an insane asylum isn't even a mystery (although it might have been to some in 1993, only a couple of years before Netscape's legendary IPO). Instead, "Show" is incredibly fake - everything from the ambitious and merciless ADA's who run Vail's office (as if the Cook County DA's Office existed to prosecute only a few homicides) to the pseudo-hardboiled dialog of his cops ("look, we ain't lookin' to cause the lady no grief.") Even the setting seems unreal - Diehl's Chicago lacks the verisimilitude of the fictional Kindle County of the Turow novels. That "Show" is supposed to be a mystery is undermined by how little detail Diehl gives us to work with. (After the climax, Vail's team turns up details that explains everything - ala "Scooby Doo". What really kills me is that this is supposed to be a legal thriller and, despite pumping us up to the legal talent available, very little of "Show" takes place in a courtroom, and Diehl's ADA's talk about "maxing out" the people they prosecute without doing much to prove they could prosecute a shoplift. (The cops, on the other hand, are dismissed as inept apes, who parade the prisoners they collar like war-trophies, without much regard for their possible innocence.) Had he taken the defendant in one of "Show"'s subplots to trial, Diehl could have substantiated his opinions about his prosecutors and his cops in one swoop, but that's obviously more effort than its worth.

Shows About Nothing: Nihilism in Popular Culture from the Exorcist to Seinfeld

Average customer rating:

Q: What's on TV tonight? A: Nothing.
Pretty good
An eye-opening expose of our Nihilistic culture
A philosophical perspective on movies & TV
Much Ado About "Nothing"

Shows About Nothing: Nihilism in Popular Culture from the Exorcist to Seinfeld
Thomas S. Hibbs
Manufacturer: Spence Publishing Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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How the News Makes Us Dumb: The Death of Wisdom in an Information Society
New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought (S U N Y Series in Western Esoteric Traditions)
Seinology: The Sociology of Seinfeld
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense

ASIN: 1890626171

Book Description

While the movies of Frank Capra once celebrated the triumph of good over evil, George Bailey has given way to Hannibal Lecter, who through raw power and bold creativity lives "beyond good and evil." Professor Hibbs follows the trajectory of evil in American film and television, linking it to the spread of nihilism-a state of spiritual impoverishment and shrunken aspirations to which, both Tocqueville and Nietzsche warned, democracies are especially susceptible. The most recent product of Hollywood's fascination with evil is the comic nihilism of Seinfeld, in which the distinctively American pursuit of happiness is endlessly frustrated by dark forces beyond our understanding or control.

Professor Hibbs probes the themes and artistry of the landmark works of the cinematic quest for evil. A series of grisly films from The Exorcist to Cape Fear and Silence of the Lambs reveals a preoccupation with the power of evil. When evil ceases to terrify, it becomes banal, producing a comic view of the meaninglessness of life (Forrest Gump, Natural Born Killers, Titanic, The Simpsons). Seinfeld and Trainspotting represent nihilism's last stage, but not the last word, and Professor Hibbs considers how classical ideals-partially recovered in recent comedy (Pulp Fiction) and film noir (L.A. Confidential, Seven)-might point the way out of nihilism.

Customer Reviews:

Q: What's on TV tonight? A: Nothing........2005-10-06

Thomas Hibbs reveals a new dimension to American popular culture with his book, Shows About Nothing. Many people are not going to know what nihilism is, or who Nietzsche was, but they can quote Seinfeld. Hibbs spends much time expanding this common thread, and examines the philosophical undertones of popular movies like Cape Fear and se7en. By doing so, he demonstrates that what the themes these movies teach us are either dangerously close to, and sometimes outright, nihilistic.

Before this book, I thought of nihilism as full-blown anarchy, and modern American society as only 'halfway down the road' to Nietzsche. Hibbs provides a more refined explanation of what nihilism is, and it is not necessarily the nightmarish struggle between 'ubermensch' one imagines. Sometimes nihilism can be quite pleasant, since you are 'beyond their good and evil' and see all morality as mere constructs of man. The flight from responsibility is one possible reason nihilism hangs around - human nature, another - and perhaps is why some dedicate their lives to 'deconstructing' our civilization to a collection of artifices. But there is great danger in this newly acquired freedom. As Hibbs once said in a speech, nihilism brings you both Seinfeld and Columbine.

It seems to me that nihilism, existentialism and deconstructionists are all sides of the same triangle. Many people blow off these schools of thought, because 'who cares what's in some book?' Well, Marxism also started out in book form, and ultimately grew to an opponent in the nuclear stalemate of MAD. Therefore, even bad ideas have power if professors or governments choose to endorse them. We spent thousands of years crawling out of the jungle; nihilism returns us there, and to this I feel there are only two logical ends. One is looking to a lonely sky and merely blinking at what was once God's kingdom to your forefathers. The other ends on your knees, bloodied, looking up the barrel of a gun.

Pretty good.......2005-09-02

If you have any knowledge of modern philosophy you will probably find this book an engaging application of Nietzsche in pop culture. Otherwise you may have some trouble getting into it. I liked it well enough but I have read better (Neil Postman and Roger Scruton come to mind). The book will become dated as the examples used pass away into the forgotten archives of memory. But for now it does the trick.

I agree with the theory that influential philosophy (such as Nietzsche) eventually trickles down from its lofty intellectual heights to the lowest levels of society. From the episodes of popular film and TV the author teases out the underlying philosophic assumptions our culture has accepted. Some are overt but many operate below our personal radar--we simply take it for granted.

Overall the book was like a very long but very good film criticism. Fun.

An eye-opening expose of our Nihilistic culture.......2001-08-13

Nihilism comes in many forms, a natural result of the democratic liberalism that our culture has enshrined in its desire for individual self-actualization. Such is the assessment of Thomas Hibbs in "Shows About Nothing". In his inimitably prescient perspective, Hibbs sees this reflection of Nietschian thought especially predominant in the kind of entertainment that we watch.

In a particularly rigourous way, we are shown how seemingly disparate films or TV shows exhibit ways that we have approached issues of Good and Evil, ultimately indicating our collective agreement that there is little meaning in either term; instead we are subjected to coincidences and the capricious desires of a dark God who often makes lilfe one great comedy of the absurd. Hibbs shows the link between a movie like Pulp Fiction and Seinfeld, two sides of the same nihilistic coin.

The reader is left wondering where we will go next, once evil is merely and banal as goodness, and God is relegated to a being conspiring to make us unhappy and evil is always just around the corner.

At times Hibbs writes in a way that does not make his point clear. It is not always obvious if he approves of the film or movie he is discussing; on the other hand, perhaps his very ambiguity is indicative of the very problem we face.

What is remarkable is that Hibbs cannot contain his clearly Christian perspective. It is refreshing to see a Christian write a thoroughly engaging and scholarly analysis of where our culture is at. With the death of God comes comic meaninglessness and quests for meanings that ultimately have no end. He convinces us that we may indeed be Nietsche's last men.

A philosophical perspective on movies & TV.......2000-02-24

Dr. Hibbs writes how Seinfeld and Trainspotting have anesthetized their viewers to the fundamental concepts of good and evil. Although most people understand and welcome the change, most viewers seem unaware how their beliefs have changed over time. Unfortunately, Dr. Hibbs spends few pages explaining how to escape the pervasive nihilism of Seinfeld. Albeit, Seinfeld is raucously funny Dr. Hibbs admits.

Much Ado About "Nothing".......2000-02-02

This is a must read. Dr. Hibbs' message may not be what many people want to hear but it is something we ALL should hear. Without a doubt, the mediums of TV and film have a profound effect on Americans despite what some may say, and that thought alone is downright scary. For thought-provoking analysis, I would encourage you to read this book.

Average customer rating:

Keeps you on your toes!

Trash: Evil Twin (Trash , No 5)
Cherie Bennett
Manufacturer: Berkley
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Trash: Love, Lies, and Video (Trash)
Trash: Good Girls, Bad Boys (Trash)
Trash: Dirty Big Secrets (Trash , No 4)

ASIN: 0425160874

Customer Reviews:

Keeps you on your toes!.......2000-08-29

This book is by far the best one of the series. It is suspenseful and a tear jerker. You find out a lot in this one. Be sure to read this one and the rest if the series

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Show of Evil
William Diehl
Manufacturer: Arrow
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OISQCW

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Show of Evil
WilliamDiehl
Manufacturer: Random HOuse Inc
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Audio Cassette
ASIN: B000RPMTQG

Product Description

"National bestseller about brilliiant defense attorney Martin Vail and the psychotic murderer he saves from execution. Now, in Diehl's spellbinding new novel, Vail has become Chicago's chief prosecutor, the with the power to tear down enemies in hight places. But he must also confront his worst legal nightmare, one that he, himself, helped to create." quote from back of cassette case.

3 Titles in Martin Vail Series By William Diehl - Primal Fear - Show of Evil - Reign in Hell

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3 Titles in Martin Vail Series By William Diehl - Primal Fear - Show of Evil - Reign in Hell
William Diehl
Manufacturer: various
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
ASIN: B000Q06D4Q

Product Description

3 Mass Market Paperback Titles in Martin Vail Series By William Diehl - Primal Fear - Show of Evil - Reign in Hell

THE MASTER'S CHOICE: Cookie Lady; Nothing Short of Highway Robbery; Puppet Show; De Mortuis; Homicidal Hiccup; Gone Girl; Mother by Protest; Coincidence; Same Old Grind; Evil Star; Woman's Help; Here Daemos; She Fell Among Thieves; See How They Run

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THE MASTER'S CHOICE: Cookie Lady; Nothing Short of Highway Robbery; Puppet Show; De Mortuis; Homicidal Hiccup; Gone Girl; Mother by Protest; Coincidence; Same Old Grind; Evil Star; Woman's Help; Here Daemos; She Fell Among Thieves; See How They Run
Alfred (editor) (Philip K. Dick; Lawrence Block; Fredric Brown; John Collier; John D. MacDonald; Ross MacDonald; Richard Matheson; William F. Nolan; Bill Pronzini; Ray Russell; Henry Slesar; August Derleth; Robert Edmond Alter; Robert Bloch) Hitchcock
Manufacturer: Random House
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000GVSMGW

The Goon Show, Volume 1: Moriarity, Where Are You?

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The Goon Show, Volume 1: Moriarity, Where Are You?

Manufacturer: audible.com
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Audio Download
ASIN: B00092P1JO

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Show of Evil
William Diehl
Manufacturer: New York: Ballantine Books, 1995
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000NX5RG6

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EVIL (the cosmic show)
Cauldron Productions; Mary de G. White; Lila Sherman; Beth Gleick
Manufacturer: House Publication Service
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000SB7XHE

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