THE HANGED MAN

Murder and kidnaping are only the tip of the iceberg in this extravagant, yet soberly plotted, tale of parapsychology run amok. Three years ago, Mira Morales’s husband Tom walked into a convenience store at the wrong moment and was shot to death by a thief wearing lime-green shoelaces. Now psychic Mira’s just had a horrific vision of another killing. The victim this time is criminologist/shrink Andrew Steele, who’d be renowned for his pioneering work on the Delphi project if it hadn’t been kept top secret. And for good reason: Delphi had sought out convicts with psychic powers, trained them as spies and killers for the CIA, and toppled the Carter presidency. Now three escaped Delphi subjects—telepath Vic Indrio, remote viewer Eddie Manacas, and telekinetic Hal Bennet, who sports lime-green shoelaces—have joined forces for a bad-psychics’ reunion. Their old handler Steele is their first target, and wily incoming FBI deputy director Lenora Fletcher (whom they accurately predict will be drawn into the case) their second. Meantime, though, Hal Bennet has big plans for Steele’s wife Rae, whom he spirits off to his shack in the Everglades, planning to woo her without informing her that her husband no longer presents an obstacle. Hal’s ability to reach into the minds of his enemies and victims, making them do whatever he wants or causing them blinding pain, makes him one scary guy. Even scarier is the prospect that the allegedly good guys—Rae Steele, Mira Morales (whose grandmother is also on hand to display her psychic powers), about-to-be-riffed Broward County Sheriff’s Deputy Wayne Sheppard, ruthless careerist Lenora Fletcher, and Richard Evans, Fletcher’s Deep Throat in the CIA—are so consumed with infighting that they’ll never be able to fend off all the bad karma. MacGregor (Mistress of the Bones, 1995, etc.) pulls out all the stops—you’ll find more psychics here than in the year-end issue of the National Enquirer—yet still manages to keep the pot boiling, if not quite believably, until the final surprise.