Collectors

Think of Damage and other novels that lace tension with frightening sexual overtones, then add the advantage of literary style and assurance, and you have this mysterious, mesmerizing story of psychological suspense. We meet Griner's protagonist, Boston ad agency art director Jean Dubonnet, at her long-estranged cousin Claudia's wedding. Her general unease is gradually revealed as stemming from a gruesome incident in her past, a youthful ""game"" that she and Claudia played as teenagers, in which they set fire to Claudia's heirloom-filled house and critically burned Claudia's father. It's obvious that Jean still bears psychological scars: she is edgy, has an acerbic tongue, is emotionally cool and self-protective. Yet she is immediately attracted to handsome, charming Steven Cain, who says that Claudia has told him all about her, and that he has been watching her for some time. Steven invites Jean out on his sailboat, where they have percussive sex. Afterwards, he closes her hand in a car door, and sends her--alone, in a taxi--to the hospital. There, the nurse on duty is Claudia, who comments rather elliptically that Steven has ""a lot of accidents."" By this time, the reader knows that the alternately ardent and elusive Steven is unstable at best, and that Jean is in peril, but frightening details about the women in Steven's past and the true depth of Jean's penchant for danger are still to come. Meanwhile, Griner (Follow Me) discloses that both Jean and Steven are obsessed collectors: in symbolic expression of their characters, Jean collects antique fountain pens and Steven, binoculars. As readers ponder echoes of John Fowles's The Collector, and events move toward the feared denouement, Griner's meticulous care in setting each scene accelerates the suspense. It is too bad that several character traits that Griner repeatedly emphasizes (Jean's preternatural sense of smell, possible collusion between Claudia and Steven) are left vague Still, he never resorts to the staged faux-frissons of conventional psychological thrillers, and his spare prose convincingly portrays the process by which an intelligent, independent woman becomes the victim of an obsessed predator--or perhaps of her own bent toward self-destruction. Agent, Nicole Aragi at Watkins/Loomis. (Sept.)