Flowers for the Dead

First novelist Williams relies on tenuous coincidences and leaps of faith to move along her unbelievable plot. Overweight, guilt-ridden Brian Kayne, an investigator for the Paloma County, Calif., district attorney's office, visits his mother in Southern California and meets her current candidate for Mrs. Brian, artist Jo Starrett. Reading a group of poems Jo illustrated, Brian leaps to the conclusion that the author, Sam Fox, is really Lloyd Fulton, whom authorities think may be responsible for the recent disappearances of his wife and daughter in Paloma County. Brian's questions raise doubts in Jo, who has collaborated with Sam for 10 years without ever having met him. Brian's cat, Jo's senior-citizen painting class and a group of backpacking nuns all feature prominently in this mishmash of a story. (Dec.)