While novels featuring a love affair between the multiple personalities of two psychopathic serial killers are certainly rare, any points Nasaw might have earned for originality are canceled out by the improbable plot of this fourth E.L. Pender adventure (after 2004's Twenty-Seven Bones
). British psychiatrist Alan Corder has spent years trying to cure Ulysses Maxwell, an in-patient at a prestigious Oregon treatment facility, of his murderous alternate identities. Maxwell, who's obviously clever enough to game the system, gets an unexpected ally when the attractive and deranged Lily DeVries arrives at the center. After Corder hosts the two killers at his house, they butcher him, his wife and their psychiatric attendants and make their escape. Soon ex-FBI series hero E.L. Pender and Dr. Irene Cogan, a psychiatrist who was kidnapped and tortured by Maxwell, take up the pursuit. Though Nasaw raises interesting questions about identity and sanity, his superficial answers leave this blood-soaked action yarn lacking genuine thrills or chills. (Sept.)
