Hungry Eyes

Taking up the themes of Hoffman's first story collection (Firefly... Burning Bright), this suspenseful debut novel of victimization and revenge adds an intriguing filip to the serial-killer formula. It's the same familiar game of cat-and-mouse between a criminal mastermind and the authorities, but this time the killer is a woman, and her murders of rapists and pedophiles are turning her into a local hero. Dubbed the Vigilante by the Philadelphia cops, Shara Farris is a woman with a made-up name and no identity. Her trademark crime-scene scrawl, ""No More Hungry Eyes,"" is the only clue to her past. Challenged by Farris to prevent her next murder, crime reporter Deirdre Caffrey must reconstruct the grisly childhood trauma that Farris suffered at the hands of a molester. The result, a masterful portrait in psychopathology, forms the core of this otherwise eventless tale. Although Hoffman fails to flesh out his peripheral characters or avoid cliches (""Time, too, was of the essence. Here the end justified the means""), his frankness on the delicate subject of child abuse is bracing. The complexity of this particular monster inspires pathos as well as terror, for Hoffman's characterization transcends the simpleminded killing-machines who populate the genre. (May) FYI: Hoffman is the editor and publisher of Gauntlet, the anti-censorship magazine that publishes Gauntlet books.