N. Y. actor Peter Abranti is a schizoid psycho-killer: he keeps waking up next to dead women, not remembering just how or why he killed them. But it just so happens that Peter's girlfriend Katie, an actress-turned-librarian, is an amateur sleuth. . . who has started to get curious about a certain series of unexplained lady-killings. Furthermore, a medium named Madame Szilardi (whom Katie meets on a TV talkshow) senses super-dangerous auras in Katie's vicinity! So Peter--or ""the beast"" inside him--panics (""She was on his trail!""); he starts making obscene/threatening phone calls to Katie, using a Charles Laughton accent to disguise his voice. (""Frighten her, the beast said. Torment her, it commanded."") And Katie finally calls the police--in the form of widower Wally Gilford, who'll eventually save her from lethal Peter (an interminable stalk-a-then in the library stacks), falling in love along the way. Fisher (Variation on a Theme) has shown some offbeat suspense charm in the past. But this time, with an overgrown short story (10 percent plot, 90 percent padding), his work is paper-thin, totally implausible--and uncommonly tedious.