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| “ | Oh, I guess I want to fall in love, to stay in love for a while. I want to feel real romance every day that I possibly can. I want to feel something special in my life. I want to experience intimacy with another person. I'm not different from everyone else. Except that I act instead of daydream. | „ |
| ~ Casanova |
Casanova (real name: Nicholas "Nick" Ruskin) is the main antagonist of the 1995 thriller novel, Kiss the Girls, the second installment of James Patterson's Alex Cross series. He is a serial killer/rapist, while working as a police detective.
Biography[]
Though not much is known about his past or how he came to be how he was, it is known that when he was a teenage boy, Nick Ruskin snuck into Coty Pierce's, a girl he went to high school with, home where he spent his time in the attic, watching her and her family through the vents. One night, he finally decided to sneak out of the vents to commit "the perfect crime", and raped and killed Coty, her sister, and her mother. Some time later, he met Will Rudolph in college. It is unexplained how, but he found out that he had stalked and killed a young couple and kept the woman's tongue as a souvenir. He then convinced him he could trust him. The two formed a bond from then and began on their own murder sprees together.
He eventually became a detective in Durham, North Carolina, which not only deceived the cops as he gained their trust, but also gave him the chance to change the dates of the kidnappings so he would have alibis. He was also married, but had somehow managed to go on his killing sprees without her knowing.
Unlike his partner, Will (aka The Gentleman Caller), who would simply kill his victims on a whim and collect their body parts, Nick was more calculating and reserved, selecting women based on both physical beauty and their personality. In his mind, they loved him as well. After he kidnapped them and took them to his lair, he would drug and rape them and make sure they did not break any of his rules, which meant trying to escape or talking to each other. He apparently suffers from Dissociative Identity Disorder, as he wears different masks depending on his personality. If any of the girls broke his rules, he would either kill them via lethal injection, or take them to the woods, tie them to a tree, cut their hair off as his own way of punishment and leave them do die of exposure and starvation. He'd rape them one last time before leaving them, as well as take off his mask to reveal his face. He seems to feel empathy and remorse for them as he does so. However, his darker personality tends to take over and he convinces himself that they are to blame for their own deaths.
Nick eventually meets his demise when he kidnaps Alex Cross' niece, Naomi, as well as Kate McTiernan. He seems to value Kate the most due to her intelligence. He rapes Kate as he does his other victims before she escapes. Upon doing so, Kate encourages Alex to track him down even further after she informs him that she spoke with Naomi. Time passes on as they discover more clues leading to their discovery of The Gentleman Caller after they trace Casanova's drugs to Rudolph. As they get closer, both Nick and Will break into Kate's house and beat her into a coma for a while. Later in the novel, Alex and his partner, Sampson, discover where they are both keeping the women and make it to their hideout. Nick and Will are both watching them and take Sampson out while Cross finds Naomi. Cross hears Sampson scream and runs to find both Nick and Will, wearing masks, on top of his partner with a knife stuck in his back, but still alive. Cross takes his gun out and fires at them, hitting one on the shoulder.
Cross takes his gun out and fires at them, hitting one on the shoulder. The two take off running and make it to a nearby bar, where they steal a truck and drive off. Cross takes a car and goes after them. However to throw Cross off, the two get out of the car while in traffic to run opposite directions while firing their guns. Cross follows one, they exchange gunfire, and he hits him in the chest. Cross runs to the man and takes off his mask, revealing him to be Rudolph. He dies telling Cross that he will never catch Casanova, as well as without revealing his true identity. This results in the latter going into a breakdown after losing his "twin". Once Kate is out of her coma, Alex visits her, goes jogging and finds a dead FBI agent. He runs back to the house where Nick hits him with a stun gun. With Cross down, he heads for Kate, but Kate manages to fight him off. He takes out his gun to shoot her, but Cross gets up in time to shoot and kill him in self-defense.
Trivia[]
- Casanova appears heavily based on real life notorious sexual sadist Gary Heidnik. Heidnik in real life kidnapped multiple women in a "harem" and held them captive in his basement, raping and torturing them incessantly, severely enough one of them was aborted of Heidnik's baby sired from the rapes shortly after the conception. Two of the women in question died, one from the torture and one from infection from the squalid conditions. Heidnik was caught when one of the women who lived escaped and alerted the authorities.