A Pound of Flesh

Scotland Yard detective superintendent Blanche Hampton, as plucky, harassed, and emotionally stretched a heroine as one could imagine, must track down a cannibalistic serial killer in this wrenching work that fulfills the promise of A Midsummer Night's Killing . Barnes interweaves the lonelyheart laments of both killer and cop to create a highly effective narrative. The murderer is David Parker, an obsessive accountant who becomes unglued with the death of a domineering mother. Meanwhile Blanche, a six-foot-tall divorcee, faces sexism at work and the tribulations of single life after hours. David is soon compulsively washing his hands, hearing voices, avoiding his fiancee and eventually killing--and cannibalizing--a succession of women he meets through newspaper ads. Although his identity is clear from the start, what remains to be revealed are both the event that lies at the root of his behavior and the tie that binds one hunter to the other. Barnes subtly chronicles David's descent into outright madness, displaying here as elsewhere the choice, edgy style of a new author with an assuredly incandescent future. (May)