LOVERBOY

FBI agent Imogen Page tracks a lady-killing sicko in a by-the-numbers thriller.

Loverboy—self-styled—likes playing games. He has this ongoing one with the FBI, in which some two and a half weeks before striking, he gives the feebies a chance to forestall him. In the mail, they receive a custom-built collage containing oh-so-cleverly devised clues to a prospective crime scene. If they can somehow manage to untangle the what and where of it, Loverboy, good sport that he professes to be, agrees to back off. On five previous occasions he hasn’t had to, and now the damsel in distress is that world-class nuclear physicist Dr. Rosalind Carnow. Not only is she a notable in her own right, but she happens to be the intimate friend of an even more prominent celeb, the handsome, dashing Benton Walsingham Arbor, head of Arbor Motors. Hard-pressed, the FBI turns to Special Agent Imogen Page, young star of the FBI’s equally young Cognitive Science Unit. She’s been grieving over the death of her beloved brother, but these are desperate times. “You’re the best the Bureau’s got,” moans one of her bosses, an assessment Imogen, who knows her own worth, is not inclined to dispute. Smart, tough, and cute as a button is Imogen; no wonder, then, that Benton Arbor soon joins the universe of males hopelessly smitten. In this number include even Loverboy himself, although his pash for Imogen is undercut with dollops of hate, or what else is a crime fiction serial killer for? Sixteen days, to be precise, from riddle to riddance (of Rosalind) if Imogen can’t decode Loverboy’s hieroglyphs. Will she succeed where everyone else in the Bureau has failed so miserably? Are you kidding?

On all-too-familiar ground, Jaffe (The Water Nymph, 2000, etc.) marches to the sound of the same old hum-drummer.