Born Bad

A plot unfocused by underdeveloped characters makes a shaky vehicle for the sincere social concerns of Hoffman's latest crime thriller (after Eyes of Prey). When three co-eds from Philadelphia's Penn campus die apparently by their own hands, everyone is willing to write them off as suicides except hard-nosed homicide detective Ariel Dampier and campus cop Lucius Jackson, who is Ariel's ex-husband and on-again, off-again love interest. The reader discovers early on that two of the deaths are the handiwork of Shanicha Wilkins, a crack baby who has grown up without a trace of conscience and who gets her kicks craftily manipulating the vulnerable--in this instance, members of a confidential date-rape therapy group--to acts of violence and self-destruction. The other fatality bears the imprint of an anonymous Shanicha-wannabe, a surprise visitor from the bad seed's death-darkened past who eventually pulls Ariel and her loved ones straight into Shanicha's dangerous path. Although Shanicha has great potential as a criminal puppet master spawned by social neglect, Hoffman limits her to playing the single-minded psychopath, given to nonstop murder schemes, obsessive showering and violent outbursts. The story is dominated instead by Ariel, a mulatto woman on a predominantly white male police force, who is prone to repetitive reflections on identity that never illuminate similar issues for the other characters. So much space is devoted to Ariel getting a grip on her own problems that the murder investigations--and the novel's attempted investigation of racism, sexism, sexual abuse, drugs and failed social reform--are dissatisfyingly displaced. (Mar.)