THE PURIFICATION CEREMONY

Hunters get hunted by a vengeful lunatic in this all-stops- out yarn of the world's worst hunting trip. James Metcalfe's thousand-square-mile spread on the border of Alberta and British Columbia is the best-stocked site for trophy deer hunting on the face of the earth. Now that Metcalfe's dead, his estate's been opened to hunting parties. The first party (each member has paid a fee of $7,000 for a week's hunt) includes three childhood buddies from Pennsylvania; a Nashville gun-store owner who hunts with bow and arrow; a Texas millionaire and his latest trophy wife; a knee-jerk liberal magazine writer planning an anti-hunting exposÇ; and Diana Jackman (a.k.a. Little Crow), a partNative American software writer who's going back to the woods in a desperate attempt to silence the demons from her troubled past. Diana's had no peace since her long-estranged father died; his death revealed his existence to her shocked husband for the first time. Now her decision to splurge on the Metcalfe junket has put her marriage on the rocks. But the real danger lies ahead, with an implacable spirit who seems bent on destroying the inaugural party by stalking and murdering them. Does James Metcalfe walk again (if he ever really died), or is the killer his nasty son Ronny? Is the motive a simple hatred of hunting, or does the killer have something personal against this particular party? And how can Diana defeat an adversary who seems to have the finely-honed senses and killer instincts of a wolf? Deliverance meets And Then There Were None, with a cast out of Gilligan's Island. Sullivan (Hard News, 1995, etc.) handles the hunter-hunted scenario with a slickness seasoned with mingled aromas of peyote, animal musk, and testosterone. Shorn of the heavy-going mystical ruminations that are bound to be cut, the inevitable movie should be a first-rate actioner. (First printing of 300,000; $250,000 ad/promo)