Faces of Fear

Beverly Hills plastic surgeon Conrad Dunn has put his talents to work making his wife, Margot, the embodiment of physical perfection, but after her face is scarred in a boating accident, Margot takes her own life in this less than suspenseful thriller from bestseller Saul (The Devil’s Labyrinth ). Remarrying within a year, Dunn persuades his new teenage stepdaughter, Alison Shaw, who’s struggling to adjust to life in the Dunn mansion and to a private school with a ridiculously affluent student body, to undergo breast-enhancement surgery. Meanwhile, the police are searching frantically for the Frankenstein Killer, a serial slayer who removes his female victims’ glands as well as more obvious body parts. The motive for the killings and the eventual outcome will surprise few readers. The basic premise has a plot hole big enough to fit a truck, but Saul fans may not notice or care if they do. (Aug.)