In his series of Philadelphia-based suspense thrillers, Hoffman (Born Bad, etc.) has portrayed sexual abuse, racial discrimination, inner-city crime and other social ills as arcs in a vicious circle of victimization and revenge. This new novel is his first to stray into the realm of supernatural horror, and the detour muddles its study of the psychological trauma of rape. Shara Farris, the vigilante heroine of Hungry Eyes, returns as a street-smart bounty hunter who first helps acquit innocent police detective Lamar Briggs of the murder of a serial rapist, then teams up with him to hunt Mica Swann, a professional dominatrix on a monthly murder spree that leaves a trail of male victims all slaughtered in mid-rape from Atlanta to Pennsylvania. Shara tracks her quarry by identifying with them, and her unique psychic rapport with Mica yields mental images that tell her what the reader already knows: that Mica's kills physically liberate "the wolf inside," a bestial incarnation of someone in her life who, like her, has cause to avenge a rape. Hoffman's sincerity is never in doubt, but his outrage repeatedly outstrips imagination as a novelist: rapists seem to lurk on every page, and he portrays most men in the book as testosterone-oozing creeps who deserve what they get. By contrast, his female characters, no matter what their age or education level, speak like social psychologists who have memorized Clarissa Pinkola Estes's Women Who Run with the Wolves. What might have made a powerful study of sexual victimization comes across as an unbelievable horror tale mired in hand-me-down symbolism.

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