cover image Unbalanced Acts

Unbalanced Acts

Jeff Raines. Avon Books, $4.5 (272pp) ISBN 978-0-380-76008-4

Raines ( The Big Island ) devises some interesting plot twists, but his penchant for disgusting scenarios mars this intense thriller. Unidentified terrorists abduct ``the dozen most psychotic killers in the state'' from a Long Island hospital for the criminally insane, leaving behind a message scrawled in the blood of a slain guard: ``The lights go down on Broadway.'' Mike Kelly and his anti-terrorist team at the New York Police Department coordinate a manhunt as the city nervously anticipates the release of the crazed murderers. The kidnapers resurface to bomb a Broadway theater and unloose a sabre-wielding psychotic in Times Square. Evidence points to Sandinista supporters hiding in rural Connecticut, but Kelly, suspecting a set-up, follows a trail of left- and right-wing extremists, undercover FBI investigations and unsolved murders to tie a solution to events that happened back in the late '60s. It's unfortunate that the author seems to take almost as much pleasure as his less savory characters in violence for its own sake. (May)