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As far as psycho thrillers go, I feel like I grew out of the genre years ago, but I picked this up because I had faith that Bakker would deliver something worthwhile. After all, this is the man who gave me the "The Prince of Nothing" trilogy.

While "Neuropath" isn't near as compelling and awe-inspiring as those three books, it's certainly well-written and throughly thought provoking. A lot of it follows typical, well-worn patterns in the genre -- a little "Silence of the Lambs," a little "Seven." But then Bakker sets the tale around 30 years in the future, in an age wrecked by poor environmental policies, a pornography-eroded culture and a post-war-on-terror police state.

The core of the book? A mild sci-fi take on cutting -edge neuroscience and psychology. And, of course, Bakker spreads his own philosophical ponderings throughout. The heart of the novel deals with the nature -- and perhaps the illusion -- of human consciousness. The neurological content in the book really floored me at times, made me ponder self (as well as the faces on MARTA) in an entirely new and unsettling light.

Bakker says that with this book he set out to write a psycho thriller that was both viscerally and intellectually disturbing -- he certainly delivers on the later.

(I was really torn between giving this a three and a four. I have issues with some of the choices Bakker made in terms of the storyline, but thought the characters were solid and the subject matter utterly enthralling. So consider this something more like a 3.5 or 3.75.)