`In the Forest' by Edna O'Brien.(Knight Ridder Newspapers)

Edna O'Brien apparently has stirred a small storm in her native Ireland of course, she's used to that over her latest novel, which fictionalizes the 1994 slayings of three people by a mentally disturbed young man.

O'Brien has changed the names of those involved and, presumably, many of the details she likely has no means of knowing. But the result was and is the same in real life and in "In the Forest": A mother and son and a priest die at the hands of a lunatic.

The result is a rivetingly creepy tale, something O'Brien is quite good at. (Remember "The House of Splendid Isolation"?) O'Brien is a wonder at foreboding and gloom, and "In the Forest" is no exception.

At the core of the tale is young Michen O'Kane, who as a child saw his father repeatedly beat his mother. Young Mich's mind begins to slip then, and the death of his weak and colorless mother and subsequent abuse at the hands of almost every person one should count on for aid (priests, social workers) both cements his distrust of all humanity and unmoors an already shaky mind.

When O'Kane comes back home from a lengthy prison term served for shooting at his father with a stolen gun the man from whom he stole the gun brands him the Kinderschrek (a German term for a bogeyman that sticks to young O'Kane for the rest of his life) he is angry with everyone and dangerously insane. He already has been failed by his family and several youth homes, and now he has come home hardened by prison.

He spends his days terrifying the citizenry who never helped him, then fastens his sights on a townswoman, Eily, who has a young son, Maddie. The two live in a ramshackle home in the woods in which the young Mich ...