Dominic

Austin, Tex., prosecuting attorney Dominic, the principal narrator of Pryor’s unsettling if unsatisfying sequel to 2015’s Hollow Man, has an interest in protecting 16-year-old Bobby, because Bobby knows he’s a murderer. A charming psychopath, Dominic sees Bobby as “a younger version of me, too young to actually be diagnosed as a psychopath, but headed in the right direction.” Dominic accepts Bobby’s offer to help stop the homicide detective investigating the unsolved murder he committed a year earlier. Another person who poses a threat to Dominic is Brian McNulty, his hapless officemate, whose ordinary first-person narrative nicely contrasts with Dominic’s. Brian has his eye on a judgeship that Dominic wants for himself. The plot takes some surprising and often convenient turns, at times straining credulity. Fans of Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho may be okay with Dominic, but others will have a problem with the lack of any central characters that engender sympathy, let alone empathy. Agent: Ann Collette, Rees Literary Agency. (Jan.)