Rampage

Named, like Chehak's 1990 Harmony, for the small Midwestern town of its setting, this coolly precise, rather muted gothic thriller opens in Oregon, when Rafe Ramsey steals four-year-old Jolie, whom he claims is his daughter, away from her abusive foster parents, whom he kills before fleeing for California. Meanwhile, the husband of Rafe's childhood playmate Madlen Cramer dies in L.A. in a mysterious car wreck. Unbeknownst to her, Rafe follows grieving Madlen and her two children back to her father's house in Rampage, Iowa, where she, Rafe and her dead husband, Haven, grew up. A claustrophobic town, sandwiched between an insane asylum and a prison, tossed by deadly, not-quite-natural thunderstorms, Rampage holds secrets that are stirred up by Madlen's and Rafe's separate arrivals. Chehak is at her best describing memories, by turns idyllic and disturbing, of the lost childhood that Madlen, Rafe and Haven shared, and of their nascent understanding of the dark, grownup doings around them. Although Rafe is an intriguing villain whose violence seems to spring from thwarted attempts at love, the book's contrived climax--when Madlen must decide whether to take him as a lover or else force herself to look into his sinister past--is less satisfying than the slow buildup and expert atmospherics for which Chehak (Smithereens) is already well known. (Aug.) FYI: Chehak and her husband recently opened a bookstore/cafe called Inxspots in Keystone, Colo.