The Minus Man

It is an eerie, rueful tale Vann Siegert tells in McCreary's ( Mount's Mistake ) startling second novel. After a cross-country move from his native Oregon to a small Massachusetts town called Bledsoe, Vann is soon looking for employment, a place to live and victims. Vann is a serial killer who poisons hitchhikers from a flask of Southern Comfort laced with lethal sedgwort. ``Go ahead and help yourself'' are the last words these unsuspecting riders hear. In Bledsoe, Vann finds temporary work in the post office and victims aplenty. What sets this work apart from the usual serial-killer saga is the tone. In an uninflected but quietly impassioned voice, Vann relates the murders and bits and pieces of his own dark history--his mother, for instance, used to tie him to a chair in the cellar when he was a boy. Painfully self-aware and clearly suffering, Vann is a troubled, memorable character. (Sept.)