BLOOD MOON

A new hero for veteran novelist and anthologist Gorman (The Night Remembers, 1993, etc.): Robert Payne, forensic psychologist and former FBI agent. His client, Nora Conners, daughter of filthy- rich Richard Tolliver, wants him to use his serial-killer profiling skills to pick up where his friend Mike Peary left off, tracking down the man who killed Conners's daughter eight years ago. Before he became a hit-and-run casualty, Peary had pieced together evidence linking the killer to sleepy New Hope, Iowa, and that's where Payne goes to check out three likely suspects: barnstorming evangelist Rev. Cal Roberts, honey salesman Richard McNally, and antiques dealer Sam Lodge. The suspects (and, let's face it, Payne himself) are about what you'd expect; it's the client who turns out to be full of surprises, first by following Payne to New Hope and getting killed, then by turning out not to have been Tolliver's daughter after all. When he learns that the killer has kidnapped McNally's daughter in retaliation for McNally's blackmail, Payne- -keeping his identity secret from Jane Avery, the smitten New Hope police chief—switches clients, taking Tolliver's money to find his son Craig, a rotten apple (molester of little girls, etc.) who's clearly the killer he's looking for. But which of the suspects is Craig? Not much of a riddle to end a professionally told story whose most promising complications are over halfway through the book.