With Tenderness, the accomplished author of teenage fictions, Robert Cormier, gives his enthralled readers a thriller with a difference. Eric Poole, latterly an imprisoned serial killer of beautiful young girls towards whom he feels great "tenderness" (having started his killing career by doing away with his mother and loathed step-father) meets his equally disturbed delinquent match in the lovely young teenager Lori Cranston, who becomes emotionally fixated on him. It looks as though she too will have to be taken care of by him in the usual way until her disarmingly generous love for him begins to make him experience emotions he has not felt since he was a baby in his mother"s arms. Robert Cormier"s deft portrayal of the psychology and developing emotional life of these two hardened young people as they dodge the law adds an unusual depth and yes "tenderness" to this riveting thriller with a totally unexpected twist in the end of its tale. --by Tamsin Palmer