Killing Season

Set in fictional River Remez, N.Mex., this overlong suspense novel from bestseller Kellerman (Straight into Darkness) centers on the obsessive quest of nerdy high schooler Ben Vicksburg for the serial killer who murdered his beloved older sister, Ellen, on her way home from school one afternoon two years earlier. Ben found her corpse after months of frantic searching across the state. Fortunately for him, the hot new girl in school, Dorothy “Ro” Majors, is herself scarred by the death of her sister, a cancer victim. A true-crime buff, Ro is also not put off by Ben’s decorating his room with photos of murdered girls who may have been the prey of the man responsible for Ellen’s death. Predictably, he falls for her (“Since Ro had come into his life, it was not surprising that desire had decided to wake up and party”), but their on-again, off-again relationship fails to engage. Alas, their amateur sleuthing isn’t much more interesting than their romance. (Oct.)