BOOKS Headcase Jay Bonansinga (Simon & Schuster) Written to attract readers who normally head straight for the Stephen King section of the bookshop, Headcase is a low-brow (with pretensions to being high-brow) tale of a serial killer.
It kicks off with the well-used ploy of making the protagonist an amnesia sufferer. The hospital that helped scrape him off the front bumper of an 18-wheeler names him John Doe. Then a man claiming to be his brother turns up.
But if this is Doe's brother, he has a beef with his sibling: the stranger first tries to strangle Doe, then looks to do away with him on some abandoned wasteland.
Doe escapes, steals some cash and, scanning the local newspaper advertisements for help, finds private investigator Jessie Bales.
Bales is blonde, beautiful and 1.87-metre tall - and she is agreeable to finding out who John Doe really is.
From this point on, Headcase becomes a breathless, not to mention brainless, chase through Chicago and the Mid-West. For a while we are led to believe Doe may be a certified lunatic who is into dismembering his victims while they are still alive, but this theory is quickly discredited when Jessie's daughter displays perfect trust in him.
The exit of this theory divests the plot of real tension.
