Flinch

At the center is Jimmy Gage, a tabloid writer for Slap magazine who’s been contacted by someone calling himself “The Eggman,” a serial killer who has laid claim to six unsolved murders around Los Angeles—except the whole thing is declared a publicity hoax by the police, who’ve branded Jimmy a publicity hound.

But then a year later, crime-scene photographs of the murders turn up in the possession of Jimmy’s brother, Jonathan, a high-profile plastic surgeon. Although Jimmy acknowledges that this makes Jon-athan a suspect, he also realizes that this might be simply one more round in the psychological games the brothers have been playing—and Jonathan mostly winning—since they were children. It’s a twisted sibling rivalry newly charged by Jonathan’s recent marriage to Jimmy’s former girlfriend.

Throw into the mix Jonathan’s impeccable standing in the community (as compared to Jimmy’s lack of one) . . . the female detective who can’t decide which brother to believe . . . and the thugs, con-artists, baby-faced brainiacs, and hard-edged women who are potentially lethal distractions in Jimmy’s life.

But the distractions will have to wait: Jimmy’s committed to discovering the identity of the killer, and no one gets a better pay-off from his obsession than the reader of this edgy, fast-forward, unstoppably entertaining novel.