Night Calls

Night calls form the plot of Anderson's mystery, an unremittingly grim story, not for the squeamish. An unknown man phones Chad Palmer, a Houston resident, and announces he's about to kill the woman whose cries for help Chad hearsas he does the shot before the man hangs up. Answering the bewildered Chad's report to the police, Detective Sharon Reason comes to his house, beginning an investigation that leads nowhere for months. The maniac keeps up his attacks, involving Chad via the phone, using a cunning system to rout the calls so they can't be traced. Sharon and the homicide squad are frustrated until the killer breaks into the house where a battered wife is hiding from her husband, characters in a subplot. Disobeying the SWAT team at the place, Chad rushes inside to face and identify the man in the novel's drawn-out, rather implausible denouement. (March 31)