VOODOO MOON

Thirty-plus years after homicidal banker Paul Renard, rumored to be spreading voodoo practices among his fellow inmates, escaped from Sterling Psychiatric Hospital after killing Doc Sterling and torching his kingdom, Rick Hennessy, the local kid charged with killing his ex-girlfriend Sandy Caine, swears he’s possessed by Renard’s spirit. Police Chief Susan Charles and the Brenner, Iowa, force couldn’t get to the bottom of the case in a million years, but maybe ex-FBI profiler Robert Payne (Harlot’s Moon, 1998, etc.) and cable TV psychic Tandy West can—if only somebody would stop shooting at them minutes after they visit the site of Sterling Hospital and leaving dead bodies in their hotel rooms. The clues point to so many different suspects—Dr. Aaron Williams, the psychiatrist who swears Rick is innocent; Sandy’s pornographer father; even Tandy’s producer Noah Chandler, a failed actor who seems to be grasping at straws—that it’s no wonder middle-aged Robert and insecure Tandy keep taking breaks to conduct an appealingly school-kid romance, and driving out of town in the dead of night on the strength of paranormal flashes about still more corpses. They’d be more likely to keep their eye on the ball if they knew how many more victims would be sacrificed to the legacy of Paul Renard, and how close to them the killing would come, before a climactic revelation ties all the mysteries together more dexterously than you thought possible.

Robert’s fourth case is the most ingenious in this unabashedly pulpish series, even if the crack profiler never does get a chance to profile anything.