Legion by William Peter BlattyMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
For starters, we must define what this novel is and where it exists in The Exorcist universe.
1) This is NOT the basis for the movie Exorcist II: The Heretic directed by John Boorman, that film was made before this novel was published and its story is completely unrelated.
2) This novel is also not a direct sequel as The Exorcist's main characters Regan McNeil, Chris McNeil and Father Merrin do not appear in the story.
3) This is barely a horror novel for the reasons I will explain below.
The story follows police Lieutenant Kinderman, the movie-buff detective we met in The Exorcist. Here he investigates a series of murders with a religious theme (such as crucifixion) that seem to be related to a dead serial killer known as The Gemini Killer.
Kinderman is baffled but is diligent in his investigations, along the way he (very) often goes into philosophical/theological monologues about the nature of evil, free will and consciousness. These deviations can get tiresome after awhile and one wonders why anyone would just sit by and listen to his musings when there's police work to be done. This is one reason many have given this book a bad review as there seems little point to it and makes Kinderman seem like a scatterbrained incompetent.
Things perk up when the investigations lead him to a psychiatric hospital where the real heart of the novel lies and where we come to understand how these murders tie into the story in The Exorcist.
One cannot write one of the best horror novels ever written and then expect lightning to strike twice - and it doesn't here, but this is still a solid police procedural/supernatural mystery. The writing is the star here as the story never drags and the reader is never lost even with the philosophical side streets the story sometimes takes.
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