Dark Matter

While it is difficult to categorize this wide-ranging novel in relation to the author's previous Nightcaps , few readers will be able to put it down. It opens as a gruesomely explicit tale of contemporary horror, with a serial killer cleaving the skull and dissecting the brain of a young girl while she is still alive. This event occurs in Stockholm, where a brillant young quantum physicist has just received a Nobel Prize and, against the wishes of his beautiful assistant and lover, signed a contract with a mysterious American group to pursue his research in Los Angeles. Four years later, in 1995 Los Angeles, a similar murder brings black police detective Kate Duvall onto the scene, and the story becomes a standard thriller, containing the stock elements of police corruption and shadowy government agents, and focusing on the detective's growing involvement. The action scenes are leavened with complex discussions of quantum physics and the nature of reality, building toward a science fiction-like ending. The bad guys introduce some jolting deus ex machina turns, and there is one too many ``final'' encounter between the opposing forces, but this novel could nonetheless catapult Reeves-Stevens to the top ranks of thriller/horror writers. (Oct.)