Loren D. Estleman's knife-edged serial-killer thriller, Gas City is pared to its very bone. As a murderer's spree continues, the tensions simmering in a quiet oil-company town boil to the surface. Suddenly a powerful mafioso, a corrupt police chief, and the reporters covering the story find themselves pitted against one another in ways they never could have imagined. Estleman, in the leanest prose possible, brings to life not just his characters but the vices that fuel them and, in the process, exposes the gritty, ragged, sordid underbelly of urban life. He's been called an heir to Chandler — and it's easy to see why. A