Killer Instinct

The opening of this psychological suspense novel smells of evil: the body of a prostitute is found hanging upside down in an abandoned Wisconsin cabin, an arm severed off, genitals mutilated and her blood missing. Coroner Jessica Coran, a made-for-Jodie Foster character, heads the FBI team assigned to track a latter-day Count Dracula. As it turns out, the serial bloodsucker is a mousy medical-supply salesman who often stalks his victims at hospitals in a gray van. Calling himself Teach, he uses a tracheal tube to siphon off their blood, his methods not unlike Jessica's obsessively meticulous autopsies. Clearly, killer and medical sleuth are two of a kind: soon the vampire sends his counterpart a love letter and longs to sink his fangs in her neck. He's a far more soulful figure than the novel's mechanical gumshoes. ``Virgin blood was hard to come by, but according to the books, it had the most curative powers,'' Teach muses as he lies in a bloodbath, unworried about AIDS. The plot may be predictable, but Walker has created a complex, chilling high-tech tale that many readers will lap up. Walker wrote Curse of the Vampire under the pseudonym of Geoffrey Caine. (July)