With Cassandra as his muse, X has indulged in a tantalizing spree of spunk and gore, starting with the cloistered filleting of a single mother down the hall from X, then moving on to the internationally beautiful and complacent. At least this is the story if we accept the entries in X's own journal. Certainly the Spanish Detective Sangre, believes it. His job is to affirm this faith in a series of interrogations with the captured X. Dr. Cabeza, on the other hand, interviews with a more therapeutic objective. The psychiatrist eventually questions the existence of these crimes.

Who to trust? The blooded policeman who grows too sickly to pursue an effective investigation, or the psychiatrist who is revealed to possess a Cassandra of his own? Or even the manipulative X? Did he commit the crimes, or merely imagine them in stunning, bowel-moving detail? Does it matter, when perception is reality? All we have, after the fact, are his words and as Harvey points out, words are inadequate to describe or sate our appetites through a life that preys on the living.

Harvey heaps scorn on the pursuit of truth and understanding by including in Skin Hound, sections from his own journal, and with first-year lit-class questions about preceding passages of the book. This is a cruelly funny novel. Laugh the next time you hear some nabob call for an investigation "to prevent this from ever happening again."