After a lyrical opening that promises a profound and insightful look at life on the mean streets of Kansas City, Mo., Parker's debut loses its way. Cicero Day, illegitimate biracial son of one of the city's late mob leaders, plots to flood the U.S. with a new superdrug while looking for opportunities to kill and maim, purely for sadistic pleasure. Day's lack of interest in a news report that the U.S. Supreme Court is poised to ban religion from “schools, libraries, privately owned businesses, and the Internet” says less about his character than it does about the novel's scattered nature, as this implausible potential shift in the law appears without any context or follow-up. Readers should be prepared for some purple prose (“The solstice bids farewell and the equinox comes to pass. Life explodes with vibrancy, then diminishes as the Earth tilts on its axis”) and a story with little substance to offset the gore. (Sept.)