"Shikar" marks the spectacular debut of Jack Warner. Totally absorbing, it is a thriller of verve, accomplishment, tension, and imaginative power. This is the kind of story that keeps us awake and reading into the early morning hours, makes us miss our stop, forces us to be late for appointments. "Shikar" pits Grady Brickhouse, sheriff of Harte County, Georgia, against an unlikely but fearsome opponent-a full-grown Bengal tiger that has somehow found its way into his jurisdiction. Brickhouse happens to be very good at his job: keeping the peace in his sleepy corner of the huge forested wilderness at the southern terminus of the Appalachian Trail. A former high-school principal, Brickhouse is known as a gentle and fair man, people like him. But he's no match for the tiger, one of the most powerful and cunning predators on the planet-few humans are, and every hunter who goes into the woods after the beast is taken out in pieces. Grady is going to have to find someone or something that can do something damn quick-the death toll mounts every day, the media and the politicians are clamoring for something to be done . . . and something strange is going on that Grady just can't put his finger on, something that doesn't add up. . . . "Shikar" is fresh and inventive. Jack Warner performs storytelling magic in the clear, resonant style of the classic adventures of Jack London, Rudyard Kipling, and Michael Crichton. It is a novel you will never forget.