Menaced Assassin

Mystery veteran Gores (Dead Man; 32 Cadillacs) claims psycho-thriller territory with this risk-taking, rewarding crime novel. After linking her boss and lover to organized crime, film-company exec Molly Dalton is killed in what looks like a mob execution. Her husband, Will, a paleoanthropologist, loses himself in his work, studying violence and sexuality in apes. As more professional-style murders occur, San Francisco cop Dante Stagnoro, in charge of SFPD's organized crime unit, suspects that Will, perhaps being privy to Molly's information, may be another mob target, even though someone calling himself ``Raptor'' is claiming the kills in disingenuous, macabre phone messages. Drawing on a variety of conventions and styles, from the procedural to the gothic, Gores wedges a passionate lecture on evolution into a taut investigation and waxes ornate in the Raptor's chilling and vivid reveries. A professional killer from New Jersey is the likely suspect for a few of the hits, but the real criminal mind is extremely well hidden, right to the end, when few of the hoods are still standing. In his latest, Gores demonstrates masterful narrative sleight-of-hand. (Oct.)