THE PARENT KILLER

That hoary old antihero of the murder mystery, the vigilante serial killer, is reconceived and supplied with a relatively new target in Blake's lurid debut novel, which takes place in a Louisiana backwater town where a series of abusive parents find themselves targeted for murder by a former child-abuse victim. The novel begins when young Danny Rampart and two of his friends run away after their efforts to protect themselves against their abusive parents prove futile. Matters are complicated when Danny's father, Bobby, is violently murdered, sending a chill through the tiny town of Sutter Springs. Most of the perspective on the town and the murders is provided by Mason Xavier, a former down-and-out resident who inherited millions after his parents died, and his sexy girlfriend, Rachel Borello. The high school principal, who has been letting the children hide out in the school over the summer, begins to suspect Xavier when the parents of another runaway child are killed. Blake takes a considerable risk by foreshadowing Xavier as the killer well before the climax of the novel, relying on a series of half-baked plot twists to sustain the suspense as Xavier abducts one of the runaway children to keep the police off his tail. The plotting is solid albeit pedestrian, but the quality of the prose ranges from generic to clumsy, and genre clichés pop up at regular intervals. Blake manages to generate some tension here and there, but overall this is a trite, overwrought debut. (Sept.)