Jackals

As with Grant's Raven, this chiller focuses on roadkills, chiefly of humans, this time along Tennessee's Potar Ridge. There wealthy Jim Scott runs a group of ``hunters'' whose prey are ``jackals''-upright subhumans who run in packs, howl on all fours, have eyes that glow before headlights and kill straggling folks they find in deserted country areas. (Oddly enough, these packs supposedly exist throughout the country, but only Scott and his band know about them.) Grant's plot centers on Rachel, a woman from California, who is attacked on the interstate out of Knoxville, then chased by a jackal in a Cadillac, who follows the fleeing woman into the hills and forces her over a drop-off. She staggers to Scott's house, where it soon becomes clear that the lovely Rachel is hardly what she seems. Minimal suspense, combined with characters and situations that defy belief, thoroughly defeat this witless exercise. (Nov.)