Nightmare, with Angel

Plucked from her German mother and forced to live with a chilly English father who's often away from their ramshackle house on a lonely stretch of coast, 11-year-old Marianne Cadogan sticks like an unwanted burr to Ryan O'Donnell, the rough-living loner who rescued her and her dog from the sea. After running away, she entraps Ryan into trekking with her to Germany to find her mother, a tortured woman sinking low among the worst kind of flesh peddlers. But buzzing in Ryan's mind--and alarming police who mount an international search for the twosome--is his memory of murdering a girl much like Marianne. The question is whether her dogged innocence will mean a chance for redemption for Ryan--or ruination. Slow set-ups undercut the climactic scenes in this psychological thriller by a bestselling British writer making his American hardcover debut. Spiced with sexual violence, dark secrets and one-note villains, the book limps along as tension repeatedly tightens then perceptibly loosens its grip. The publisher is marketing this book with a ``special introductory price,'' which may attract readers. (Sept.)