MODERN & CONTEMPORARY FICTION (POST C 1945). Jimmy Henderson, retired, in his 70s, a man without much of a history, is found mutilated (tongue cut out, eyes gouged) in his Ford pick-up truck, bang in the middle of Watertown, Massachusetts. Paul McCarthy is the town sheriff and in charge of the investigation. Like Watertown he's rather featureless and unimaginative, married, two children, a man desperately trying to keep some sort of boundary between the sordidness of his investigations and his family life. Soon, Franck, a young private detective visiting from NY, takes an interest in the case. Paul and Franck come to the same conclusion; perhaps a psychopath is at work, a conclusion reinforced when a second, similar murder is committed. It looks like the work of an artist, killing purely to escape suburban ennui.