Merciless

Burton's feverish sequel to Senseless sets up a series of homicides clustered around troubled attorney Angie "The Barracuda" Carlson, who is privately wracked by guilt for successfully defending sadistic Dr. James Dixon against Lulu Sweet, the prostitute he'd tortured. When heaps of polished bones begin appearing around the city, their grisly provenance relentlessly described in alternate chapters by two psychopathic killers, hunky yet domestic Det. Malcolm Kier investigates and predictably falls for Angie, gradually revealed as the killers' ultimate target. Burton's dialogue occasionally jars, and she injects rather too many red herrings; taken as a macabre unit, the two villains, one a rapist and the other a necrophile, smack of watered-down Hannibal Lecter. But convincing detective lingo and an appropriately shivery murder venue go a long way, and Malcolm is pleasingly revealed to be a toothsome contemporary romantic Galahad who can believably tame a Barracuda. (Feb.)