The Bricklayer of Albany Park

Does it take a monster to catch a monster?

As a student, Francis Vincenti asked his mentor, former Chicago PD detective Thomas Aquinas Foster, if it took a monster to catch a monster. Foster, a man with a tortured soul and his own self-righteous brand of justice, didn’t have an answer. Now a detective with a string of famous arrests under his belt,Vincenti is known as a cop with an uncanny insight into a killer’s psyche. Until the Bricklayer of Albany Park. Obsessed with the brutal slayings, Vincenti studies the murderer and his victims, reconstructing the killings and burials by day and, at night, recreating the murders one by one in his nightmares. He knows the Bricklayer. But not well enough to stop him. 

Terry John Malik

TERRY JOHN MALIK is a Chicagoan to the core. Born and raised in the city he loves, son of a Chicago fireman, he now explores the dark back streets and alleys of the city’s imagination. Mr. Malik is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame where he majored in English, and an alumnus of Loyola University School of Law. Terry brings to his work a wide variety of life experiences. He taught English for several years in the Archdiocese of Chicago School System; designed computer systems for an international accounting firm; worked with distressed borrowers as a banker for the largest bank in Chicago; practiced law for twenty-eight years appearing in federal courts across the nation; became the president of a financially troubled high school; administered a foundation that provided scholarship funds for disadvantaged inner city girls; and created websites for local merchants and non-profits. Throughout his many careers, he has continued to hone his writing skills and never lost his passion for a story well told.

Prior to writing his debut novel, The Bricklayer of Albany Park, Terry hadn't written a word of fiction, although some federal judges mistakenly claimed he did. Bricklayer is a psychological thriller that follows Chicago's first serial killer since the Killer Clown. Terry has two other thrillers in the works, weaving stories of killers and cops while sitting on a beach on Sanibel Island.