cover image Death for Old Times' Sake

Death for Old Times' Sake

A. J. Orde. Doubleday Books, $16.5 (249pp) ISBN 978-0-385-41941-3

A crowded cast and an excess of fussy details further strain this mystery stuffed with too much plot. The melodrama includes extortion, murder, a Mafia connection, decades-old family secrets, a hereditary disease and the revelation of the foundling hero's true identity. Denver antiques dealer, interior designer and amateur sleuth Jason Lynx, met before in A Little Neighborhood Murder and Death and the Dogwalker, accompanies his policewoman lover Grace Willis on assignment to protect an abortion clinic from protesters. There Simonetta Leone Fixe, a right-to-life picketer from a Mafia family, is ice-picked to death; her recently deceased husband had been the recipient of a check written for an unknown purpose by Jason's foster father, who has also died recently. As Jason and Grace set out to trace the feeble-minded Simonetta's past, Jason finds himself a murder target. The convoluted, unconvincing plot includes much pro-choice propaganda, and while the Denver background is ably sketched, Jason pales next to his British counterpart, the roguish antigues dealer Lovejoy. (June)