From Susanna Moore's "In the Cut" and Joyce Carol Oates' "Zombie" to A.M. Homes' forthcoming "The End of Alice," there's suddenly a burgeoning crop of talented female novelists writing about serial killers and sexual obsessives. Among this group, Penelope Evans' first novel, "The Last Girl," stands out: It's one of the least lurid accounts of the inner workings of a deviant mind -- and it's also one of the creepiest.

Don't look here for glossy lifestyles or graphic goings-on. Instead, this young British writer presents as her monster the unassuming Larry Mann (he's also the narrator), a retired bathhouse attendant who lives in a small London apartment building. Mann's a cheery chap with a crush on the latest tenant, a mousy college girl named Amanda Tyson. He stops her in the hallway by grabbing her arm, sings out "Mandy my love" whenever he sees her, and sneaks little gifts into her lounge. Mann's attentions get increasingly intrusive, but there's no particular moment when his sanity goes off the rails.

No matter -- on every page, a hair-raising sleight-of-hand occurs: Mann's thoughts glide smoothly from the right-minded to the completely irrational, from good intentions to good-and-fucked-up. His self-serving interpretations of Amanda's behavior thoroughly chill, precisely because they sound so chatty: "No doubt about it -- she heard some terrible news, and that's the reason she hasn't been up. Because she doesn't want to let on. I tell you, that girl is the mirror image of me -- a very private person not given to airing her problems. . .Which is why the first words that entered my head when I woke up were: Something Must Be Done." What he ends up doing and where he ends up afterwards are a surprise to both himself and the reader, but the greater fright -- and Evan's greater accomplishment -- is how he convinced himself to get there.

--Jeanie Pyun