Lee Fairchild has realized every actor's dream-a theater of her own. The dream is about to turn into a nightmare. Who-or what-lives on the third floor? The theater was an abandoned burlesque house where the homeless lived-until Lee and her staff scrub it out. It doesn't matter, she tells herself, that the theater sits in Hell's Kitchen on the seedy fringes of Times Square, that it's under-budgeted and understaffed and that she (as Administrative Director) will play only one role this first season. It's an Equity theater, offering five plays in repertory. Times Square redevelopment makes the property desirable. With her husband recently dead and her daughter away at college, Lee falls into a passion¬ate affair with a younger man. Bizarre, seemingly unrelated events-beginning with a homeless man found dead on the third floor of the theater-escalate to ritual murder. Qualities that make her a good actress-imagination, empathy-pull her through the looking glass into a nightmare world, to the brink of death. Over all hovers a Mexican mask, stolen from the tomb at Monte Alban, its eyes glittering with secrets of the ancient Aztecs and sacrifice. The characters are drawn from the authors' years of experience in theater and film: Alan Dunbar, Lee's brilliant but erratic artistic director, with mysterious gaps in his resume; Ernst Kromer, guest director from Europe, tyrannical, rigid and uncooperative; Michael Day, Lee's sexy and mysterious assistant; wraithlike Fleur Mahoney, whose first role is a dead girl-and she almost is; Barry Blackwell, talented actor, compulsive practical joker; Harry O'Brien, company stage manager, who'd kill for a role. Characters from the "real" world include Alan's lover, Walter Kaplan, eccentric psychiatrist and medical anthropolo¬gist; Heather, Lee's 18-year-old daughter, who has a surprising secret life; pock-marked, cynical NYPD Detective Mordecai Green, who moonlights as an actor. "Butcher of Dreams is original, creative, and suspenseful. The ending made me breathless and I stayed up until 3 am finishing the dramatic last third of the novel! However, it is quite amusing in places as well, creating comic relief. One of the talents of the authors is to cast suspicion on almost all the players. The insight one gains into the mind and motivations of a psychopath and the descriptions of the occult are truly captivating and gripping, a reflection of excellent research. Butcher of Dreams is so much more than mystery. With its original metaphors, similes and lyrical descriptions, it is an enthralling and creative novel. I loved it!" Mara Stark, retired teacher of Advanced Placement Composition