THRILLERS

Locked Doors

By Blake Crouch (Thomas Dunne Books, $23.95).

Grade: A-

What's a falsely accused serial killer to do? When your face is plastered on the covers of magazines and true-crime books and on post-office walls nationwide, you don't have too many lifestyle choices. Not to mention the havoc it can wreak on intimate relationships.

Andrew Thomas has been lying low in the deep freeze of the Yukon territories as the world slowly - he hopes - forgets his face and name. Andrew believes he has found paradise after a horrific series of events have left his best friend, his twin brother and numerous other corpses spread across the country from North Carolina to Wyoming. Even though Andrew has come out of his misadventures alive, the fates have ordained that he be blamed for the evil machinations of others.

There's still a twisted soul who's not finished making Andrew's life a dark prelude to hell. Andrew believed he'd left the sickly, psychotic Luther Kite to die of gunshot wounds deep in the Wyoming wastelands, but you know what they say - if wishes were horses and all that. It comes back to haunt Andrew when he gets word of gruesome murders and kidnappings in his old hometown in North Carolina.

It doesn't take much effort on Andrew's part to realize that Luther is hiding on a remote barrier island off the Carolina coast and that he has imprisoned someone to whom Andrew owes a great deal.

At the peak of the story, every innocent character within miles - and the reader - is subjected to the violent whirlwind of Luther and his supremely sicko parents. This is a new millennium, and Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates and Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter have to be outdone.

Crouch comes close, but as deeply evil as his creations are, they still need a bit of priming. Luther and his parents are so over-the-top that, even though the gore factor has been tuned down somewhat from his last book, Crouch's latest falls more into the realm of horror than into the thriller designation on its dust jacket.

Peter Mergendahl

MYSTERY

Cape Perdido

By Marcia Muller (Viking, $24.95).

Grade: B-

Marcia Muller, in addition to having won the Anthony Boucher Award and the Private Eye Writers of America's Lifetime Achievement Award, was named a grand master this year by the Mystery Writers of America, the highest honor the group gives. She's written more than 30 novels, and she's probably a lot smarter, prettier and nicer person than I am, but - and you knew there was going to be a but - I didn't like this book.

Cape Perdido takes place on the Northern California coast, where speculators and investors have hatched a plan to take water from the Perdido River and float it, in huge rubber bags, to thirsty Southern California. The fights against this plan have brought together an assortment of individualists struggling to work together - a lawyer and a community worker from a New York environmental consulting firm, veteran activists from the community, and the good old boys who would prefer to shoot first and skip the questions later.

Minor acts of vandalism escalate into full-fledged arson, and the head of the environmental-action group disappears, followed by a resident of the town. The events are linked to a murder committed two decades earlier that stalled the lives of three young people and an influential older man.

The plot is at best workmanlike, at worst lackluster, with thinly drawn characters and a shifting point of view that takes a while to get the story going. I promise to read some of Muller's previous works soon and hope to find the excellence that has engendered so much acclaim, but I didn't find it here.

Jane Dickinson

UNREAL WORLDS

Mirrormask

By Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean (William Morrow, $34.95).

Grade: A

For several years, author Neil Gaiman and artist Dave McKean, both World Fantasy Award winners, have been dreaming, then collaborating, on a fantasy feature film "in the tradition of The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth." On Sept. 23, their dream becomes a reality when the Jim Henson Co. and Sony Pictures release Mirrormask.

Gaiman fans who have been following his career since his Sandman comic-book days will be excited by the book version of the film. The handsomely produced volume contains 50 color photographs of scenes from the film and more than 1,700 of McKean's storyboard pictures, as well as Gaiman's script.

The tale is a turnabout of a common childhood fantasy. What child hasn't, at one time or another, wished to run away and join the circus? In Mirrormask, 15-year-old Helena Campbell, the daughter of the owners of a small traveling circus, wants to run away from the circus and "join real life."

When her mother becomes ill and her father is forced to temporarily close the Campbell Family Circus, Helena gets a taste of that reality and finds it lacking. Soon she abandons it for a dream world filled with fantastic creatures, a world where light and darkness are precariously balanced, yet one that strangely parallels her own.

The Queen of Light lies in a coma. The Queen of Darkness wants to rule over all, butshe doesn't realize that if the world tips out of balance, all will be destroyed. The only hope for Helena is to find a mysterious talisman, the Mirrormask, which will not only awaken the Queen of Light but save her real mother, as well.

This beautiful book should whet the appetites of moviegoers of any age who long for a unique fantasy experience.

Mark Graham

CHILDREN

The Milkman

By Carol Foskett Cordsen (Dutton, $15.99, ages 3 to 7).

Grade: B+

Fort Collins author Carol Foskett Cordsen celebrates small-town life in the 1950s in this lyrical look at a milkman's early-morning route.

Told in short, rhyming phrases - "Mr. Plimpton out of bed./Cream in coffee. Egg on bread./ Milkman jacket. Milkman hat./Cranky pickup./ Cranky cat." - the milkman lets readers explore the crack-of-dawn activity about his town.

He sees the paperboy on his delivery route, Mr. Richards heading to the grocery store for an early-morning shift, a couple of joggers, and a grandma out pulling weeds. Along the way, tidbits of the community's lives are shared with readers: The Bensons moved away; Annie Gail has a broken leg; one house has a baby boy. Mr. Plimpton even finds the lost dog advertised in fliers posted around the town.

In this sweet story, Cordsen and illustrator Douglas B. Jones peek into an era when adolescents delivered newspapers and milkmen might have left a get-well card or a new baby toy in the milk box.

Natalie Soto

POETRY

Leafy As a Locust Tree

By Ida Fasel (Small Poetry Press, $15).

Grade: A

Ida Fasel is a distinguished Denver poet who loves to write about the more "painterly" aspects of nature. In the sky, she sees "warm and generous tones/ of crimson, orange, golden yellow -/ velvety, robust, delicate, volatile." A trip on the Rhine brings scenery and music together, as we pass the Lorelei: "She pulls back/ her fine golden hair with a toss/ and we cut through her beautiful face."

There's a slight shock effect here, as is often the case in Fasel's verse. There's no room for complacency or anything that might detract from enthusiasm for life. Yet quietness is everywhere, a hushed sense of what's really important that reminds us of the animated stillness in the great odes of John Keats.

Peter Thorpe

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