THE ANNIVERSARY

Three women entangled with a notorious Tennessee serial killer are terrorized by notes and gifts he’s apparently sent five years after his execution.

Melanie White handled Steven Gage’s unsuccessful appeal; Diane Massey launched her true-crime series with the bestselling book she wrote about him; Laura Seton was the girlfriend who provided the most damning evidence against him. Years after he swore revenge on them all, Laura, the most traumatized of the three, has married, gone back to college as Carrie Thayer, had a child, divorced, and settled into a relationship with Rick Evans of the Merritt (Mass.) Police Department. When a note arrives wishing her a happy anniversary five years to the day after Steven’s date with the needle, she’s terrified not only of the sender but of public exposure—she doesn’t want Rick or her ten-year-old daughter Anna to learn about her past—and strenuously resists the attempts of Melanie, the one person she’s confided in, to get her to go public. Meanwhile, Melanie is keeping mum about her own note, and Diane’s already had more intimate contact with the sender. As the field of interest narrows from three threatened females to one, Gutman (Equivocal Death, 2001) leaves no cliché unturned in her quest to pump up the peril—the escaped convict who idolized the late Steven Gage, the mysterious online friend Anna is corresponding with, the males lounging on the fringes of Carrie’s world with no errand but looking suspicious—but the only one that’s unforgivable is the presence in a bucolic landscaping that hasn’t seen a kidnapping or a murder in years of two killers, one organized, one less so.

Otherwise: The thrills keep coming, lashed on by Gutman’s craftiness in doling out inside information and her willingness to keep changing direction like a broken-field runner whatever the damage to credibility.