RUNNING ON INSTINCT

Clumsy prose and mundane effects sink this horror debut by Canadian writer Luiken. Even the villain of the tale, the ruthless "Selector," is a penny-ante figure, content to pester a handful of plain and very talkative folks from Alberta. Rarely seen, he dominates others via dreams and mind control in his self-created task of "culling the herd," i.e., winnowing the world of lesser and handicapped individuals. This smacks of the ruthless eugenics of the Nazi era, and in fact the Selector is "a supremacist. The Naziest Nazi of them all." Opposed to the Selector are a handful of valiant if humble psychics who belong to a group calling itself the Kithkin Klub. Sensing imminent danger, they are forced to go on the run with confused companions in tow. Their only hope, it seems, is to decipher an old nursery rhyme, which holds the key to the Selector's evil power. Finally, they unite to face gun-toting and mindless minions of the Selector and, at last, their potent opponent himself, in an anticlimactic denouement. Clotted with awkward similes—"like sending an electric current through a dead frog"—and further plagued by senseless descriptions—a highway is "smooth and flat, made for driving"—Luiken's novel will deflect even the hardiest of horror fans. (Aug.)