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‘The Fate of Katherine Carr’ (Books)

The main characters in this fine new novel by Thomas H. Cook are obsessed with serial killers, from a 16th-century fiend named Countess Bathory to more recent psychopaths such as Ed Gein.

Some of these monsters, including Gein, were caught and punished for their crimes, but others got clean away. Or did they? That’s one of the questions Cook asks us to ponder in this disturbing, psychologically complex book.

As the novel begins, a small-town newspaper reporter named George Gates is telling a story to a stranger on a boat as it makes its way up a tropical river.

Gates had once been an adventurous travel writer, he tells his listener. But ever since his son was kidnapped and murdered, he’s taken refuge in writing fluff.

He decides one day that Arlo McBride, a retired missing persons detective, might be grist for a light feature. But when they meet up, McBride starts to tell Gates a story about someone who simply vanished 20 years earlier — a young woman named Katherine Carr.

Cook, author of 21 novels, has been one of our finest writers for years, as readers of “Red Leaves” and “Master of the Delta” already know. But Cook’s fan base remains small. “The Fate of Katherine Carr” is further evidence that his work deserves a wider audience.

‘Fuel’ (Games)

“Fuel” has neither difficulty nor reservations about showing you some of the amazing things it can do. Codemasters boasts that the game is home to more than 8,600 square miles of open-ended terrain on which to race motorbikes, ATVs, cars, trucks and more, and once you realize that A) it takes 30 minutes to drive from the first camp to the second and B) there are 17 other camps ahead, it’s hard to doubt the claim.

“Fuel’s” groundbreaking scope is all the more impressive because of how good it looks and moves. The various vehicles handle as they should, and the dynamic weather and day/night cycles combine with some pretty scenery to create some gorgeous odes to the great outdoors.

But Asobo Studio appears to have had considerably more trouble figuring out what, beyond the occasional jaw drop, “Fuel” is supposed to accomplish from there. The sheer enormity is impressive, but it also sheds some unflattering light on how little there is to do between hot spots on the map.

“Fuel” is for Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 (coming Tuesday for Windows PC). Rated “E” for Everyone.

‘Nobel Son’ (DVD)

Professor Eli Michaelson (Alan Rickman) hasn’t exactly taken saintly roads en route to his receiving the Nobel Prize for Chemistry.

There are the students he beds and subsequently tosses out. There’s his son (Bryan Greenberg), who visibly resents dad for trampling his passions and betting on his imminent failure. Mom (Mary Steenburgen), meanwhile, is stuck in the middle, and none of this is to say anything of the trouble Michaelson left in his wake en route to immortality.

“Nobel Son’s” very first scene cloudily depicts the graphic removal of a thumb, so smart money says Eli has some bad times ahead of him. Shame we have to endure a few of our own in order to see what those moments are. “Son” certainly does a nice job, at least on paper, of establishing an intriguing group of characters, thrusting them into a good mystery and rather significantly twisting that mystery around. But the massively over-the-top execution — which continually assaults poor viewers’ ears with terrible dialogue, unwatchable meltdowns and frightfully excessive use of car chase-level mood music throughout practically the entire film — is a killer.

Bill Pullman, Shawn Hatosy, Eliza Dushku and Danny DeVito also star.