Mother, May I Sleep with Danger?

In building psychological suspense on the anxious concern inherent in the bond between parents and children, this smoothly written thriller by Jacobs (There Was a Little Boy) sends readers through well-trod Mary Higgins Clark territory. When Jessica Lewisohn, an upscale Manhattanite and executive at a social work agency, takes an instant dislike to Kevin Glade, the boyfriend her 18-year-old daughter, Laurel, has brought home from Cornell, we know it's more than a pang of overprotectiveness. The reader realizes that Kevin is evil from the beginning pages, when Kevin (then known as Billy Owens) murders his high-school girlfriend and leaves Indiana for Ithaca, N.Y. It takes Laurel quite a while to realize that the handsome, superficially artistic and sensitive Kevin is really cold, cruel and dangerous--by which time she's in big trouble. The various cops chasing Billy aren't much help: they think the stuff Jessica digs up linking him to Kevin is the product of too much free time. So it's up to Jessica to make sure that Laurel will survive her encounter with the Boyfriend from Hell. Does she pull it off? Yes, as some readers may remember from a recent CBS TV movie version of this tale starring Tori Spelling. (Aug.)