A POUND OF FLESH

Scotland Yard Superintendent Blanche Hampton (A Midsummer Night's Killing, 1992) takes on a particularly horrific case: Patricia Hoskin, daughter of a Home Office junior minister, has been strangled and her body mutilated while a recording of the St. Matthew Passion played in the background. Under orders from her smug superior Brian Spittals, Blanche charges Patricia's married former lover John Hebden—despite her feeling that the evidence against him is insufficient. Meanwhile, the real murderer, schizophrenic solicitor David Parker, keeps his panic attacks at bay by cooking and eating a meal of the dead woman's flesh and dreams of luring some other woman into his net—perhaps Blanche herself, after he recognizes her in a news photo as the woman who had cold-shouldered him after he'd dated her once last year. Despite some routine police work and a retro damsel-in-distress climax, Barnes achieves a scary intensity in his portrayal of repressed, murderous David: here's a man who really does need to kill.