Blind Spot

In this humdrum thriller with ghostly undercurrents, the first of a new series, Persons uses an old plot idea: endowing her female FBI agent with the power to see through the eyes of a serial killer as he goes about his nefarious business. Agent Bernadette Saint Clare has been kicking around field offices all over the United States when she shows up for her new assignment in St. Paul, hoping that her unusual vision and strange ability will be more welcome than they usually are to both her bosses and her fellow agents. She immediately draws a case involving bodies bound with unusual knots and each missing a right hand. A ring found at one of the sites leads her into the eyes of the killer, but his identity and motives remain unclear. Because Bernadette makes wrong choices, she struggles to understand what the reader has long figured out, missing golden opportunities to catch her man and often placing herself in mortal danger. In future installments, Persons would do well to develop her heroine's ordinary crime-busting skills. (Mar.)