THE BOOK OF CAIN

Delving into the pathology of violent crime and victimization, Chapman creates a memorable psychopath in this suspenseful debut. The killer is Isaac Drum, a misfit who suffers the kind of unhappy upbringing that many others have endured without lasting torment. Drum, however, grows into a monster, eventually going on a rampage, poisoning several women with strychnine and raping them as their bodies convulse. Drum is caught, killing a policeman in the process, and is sent to death row. The story then jumps ahead and Drum, scheduled to die by electrocution in two weeks, tells authorities that unless his sentence is changed to life in prison, he will enlist a fellow murderer to kill the son of the policeman whose life he took. As local police and the FBI scramble to protect the boy and determine whether the threat is credible, Chapman brings into full focus the profound effect that Drum has had on the lives of many people around him. They include police widow Marianne Paxton, struggling to blend into society; FBI profiler John Keenan, a troubled, lonely man who learns hard truths about himself during the Drum ordeal; and Baptist pastor Joe Cameron, who is enlightened by his ministering to Drum. Chapman, a former counselor to juvenile offenders, effectively escalates his characters' self-discovery process as Drum's threat plays out and the tension builds. He deserves high marks for showing, in well-selected detail, the childhood and juvenile events that shaped Drum. The author wisely avoids trying to pinpoint the origin of evil, but his effort at drawing its framework brings some social merit to the serial-killer genre. Agent, Stephanie von Hirschberg. (May 10)