The Package

When Emma Stein, the protagonist of this uninspired thriller from German author Fitzek (The Nightwalker), was six, she was haunted by a ghost only she could see. One night, fearing the ghost, she entered her parents’ room for comfort, only to have her angry father tell her to get out or be hurt. Emma underwent psychotherapy, and when she was 10 was supposedly cured of her hallucinations. Now, at 34, Emma is a psychiatrist, working in Berlin. After someone writes a threat worded similarly to her father’s on a bathroom mirror in the hotel room where she’s staying during a vacation trip, Emma is sexually assaulted by a murderer nicknamed the Hairdresser for his habit of shaving his victims’ heads. Her account comes under scrutiny after she’s told that the number of her room doesn’t exist, and that while her own scalp was shorn, the Hairdresser has never before left his victims alive. Fitzek toggles back and forth in time confusingly before offering a series of unsatisfying twists. Fans of this type of dark thriller will be better off with Lisa Unger. (Feb.)