The fingerprints of different senile patients are found at murder scenes, but interviews with the patients make it clear they are seemingly incapable of carrying out the elaborate killings and mutilations. Patients - there are a number of elderly people at the hospital suffering from senile dementia.He is very mysterious and not very talkative, and is seemingly apathetic towards everything since the recent death of his wife. Vincent Amfortas - another doctor at the hospital. Freeman Temple - a psychiatrist who has a dismissive and even contemptuous attitude towards his patients. Investigations lead Kinderman to the psychiatric wing of the hospital where his friend was slain. Yet again the Gemini Killer's mutilations are present. Further victims soon follow, including one of Kinderman's friends, Father Dyer (from The Exorcist), who is slain in a hospital, his body drained of blood before being decapitated. The fingerprints at the two crime scenes differ, however. A priest is later murdered in a confessional, once again bearing the mutilations distinctive of the apparently-deceased killer. Kinderman already sees that the boy is mutilated in a way identical to the victims of a serial killer known as the Gemini Killer, who was apparently shot to death by police twelve years previously while climbing the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. The answers are revealed in a climax so stunning that it could only have been written by the author of The Exorcist―William Peter Blatty.The story opens with the discovery of a twelve-year-old boy who has been murdered and crucified on a pair of rowing oars.

But more than this, it is an extraordinary journey into the uncharted depths of the human mind and the most agonizing questions of the human condition. Legion is a novel of breathtaking energy and suspense.

Why does each victim suffer the same dreadful mutilations? Why are two of the victims priests? Is there a connection between these crimes and another series of murders that took place twelve years ago―and supposedly ended with the death of the killer? Lieutenant Kinderman follows a bewildering trail that links all these people, confronting a new enigma at every turn even as more murders surface. Is the murderer the elderly woman who witnessed the crime? A neurologist who can no longer bear the pain life inflicts on its victims? A psychiatrist with a macabre sense of humor and a guilty secret? A mysterious mental patient, locked in silent isolation? Just in time for the 40th anniversary of The Exorcist – Legion, a classic tale of horror, is back in print!Ī young boy is found horribly murdered in a mock crucifixion.

Legion blatty novel