FLIRTING WITH DISASTER

A serial killer stalks Calgary, seriously disrupting a theater manager’s sex life.

The Bishop, named for the chess piece he leaves on his first victim, likes to toy with people. He tortures, he kills and he always signs his work with a token from a familiar board game. But Nicholson’s interest in the Bishop couldn’t be more perfunctory. Aside from brief, repetitive descriptions of his stalking of the (always unidentified) victim, she says nothing about the nature of the crimes or of official attempts to solve them. Instead, she focuses on the weighty romantic tribulations of Kate Carpenter (Evening the Score, 2005, etc.), whose live-in boyfriend Cam walks out when she chooses a week managing concessions at the Dandelion Festival over cruising the Caribbean with him. Kate meets Doug Walsh when he pops out of the shower half-naked while she’s using the security trailer to change. The two trade sexual banter as they make bank runs during the day and swig beer by night. Kate spends the week trying to decide whether to sleep with Doug, while going home at night and crying her eyes out over Cam, reminding Doug every chance she gets that she’s a fiercely independent woman who doesn’t need his protection, and fending off former coworker Jeff’s clumsy advances. Since all these men find Kate irresistible, why not the Bishop, too?

Nicholson’s third is DOA.