THE BONE POLISHER

Long-retired actor Max Grover can see the future of each of the young men he takes in off the streets, but he has no idea that his own future will be violent and brief. Hours after Max's latest (or is it next-to-latest?) protÇgÇ, AIDS-stricken Christopher Nordine, persuades LA shamus Simeon Grist (The Man with No Time, 1993, etc.) to have a talk with Max, somebody else drives out to Max's place, and—well, you don't want to hear about the rest of it, except that the killer, who's gone through this routine five times before, ends up thoughtfully mailing a pile of luridly revealing documents back to Max's old buddies in Boulder, accompanied by his severed finger. The search is then on, of course, for the methodical, demented killer Simeon calls ``Farm Boy'' because he seems be working out of a lair in the Kansas prairie. But since Sgt. Ike Spurrier, the homophobe assigned to Max's murder, is so emphatic about Simeon's staying out of the case, Simeon's forced to work the edges—from searching Max's place half a step behind Farm Boy to getting Max's sadistic ex-agent Ferris Hanks to host the wildest wake you've ever seen—and very dangerous edges they are. Simeon's sixth case is as stylishly rough-hewn as ever, and as aglitter with unearthly vignettes—from a wedding on the police firing range to a visit with a little girl who's been watching entirely too much TV.