It's no surprise "The Exorcist" is still going strong, while this mess has gone out of print and is available used for 27 cents. Its hero, Detective Kinderman, the only grating part of the otherwise lean and wonderful Exorcist, is front and center here. And, wow, is he a bore. Muttering, and "philosophizing" for pages and pages, forcing the reader to endure his supposedly charming, digressive approach to crimesolving, befrore something--anything!--happens to actually advance the plot.Blatty clearly thinks Kinderman is a genius creation; you begin to suspect that Blatty created this character as a self-portrait, and lets him drone on purely out of narcissism.If you find this book, as I did, in some dusty thrift store, leave it there.