MURDER GAMES

Davidson's genuine narrative talents (The Menorah Men) seem rather wasted on this highly contorted, effortfully tricky tale of a homicidal maniac loose in the swinging Chelsea section of London. An American is stabbed, an old lady is raped and throttled, a Dutch student is beheaded--and so on, with bits of poetry arriving at Scotland Yard just prior to each killing, always poetry by a former famous Chelsea resident whose initials match those of the murder victim. While the Yard puzzles, reader suspicion is directed to a kinky group of amateur movie-makers who are frenetically producing a film in Chelsea on a shoestring--and to a tall, tough, camel-faced girl reporter who's covering the story (and cozying up to the movie freaks). Busy, busy--with little detection, gore galore, and perhaps enough vividness of dialogue and atmosphere to pull the faithful through the almost Antonioni-esque opacity to an implausible finish.