Eight years after serial killer Isaac Drum's capture and weeks before his execution, Drum smuggles a letter to the widow of a police detective he murdered, stating that if his execution goes forward, her son will be abducted and killed, and FBI profiler John Keenan must decipher the truth from the threats. At times, it seems as if the author of this first novel were deliberately inviting us to compare his book to Silence of the Lambs . That's a dangerous thing to do, but remarkably, Chapman survives the comparisons nicely, thanks to his genuine storytelling gift. The best part about this impressive debut is the way the author chooses to tell his tale, which centers on the attempts of an FBI profiler to save the family of a police officer murdered eight years earlier by Isaac Drum. Instead of relating the origins of the story (Drum's crime spree, capture, incarceration) in a series of brief flashbacks, Chapman devotes almost half the novel to the backstory. By the time we enter the present, we know the killer, Drum, and the profiler, John Keenan, intimately, and we understand the strange relationship between the two men, which proves vital to the central plot. It's an unusual way to construct a novel, but here it's completely successful. Thomas Harris fans will be especially interested, but this one is a sure thing for all thriller readers. David Pitt Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved CAIN is so fast-paced, you'll want to devour it whole--if you have a cast-iron stomach. -- Maxim, May 2001 In this captivating debut novel, Chapman turns the usual serial-killer thriller on its ear. -- Denver Post