Who Dropped Peter Pan?: 9

Sometime actress, sometime sleuth, Jocelyn ``Josh'' O'Roarke (The Queen Is Dead, etc.) is happy to be back east after a sojourn in L.A.--happy, that is, until a regional theater production of Peter Pan makes La-La Land look a lot safer than Never Never Land. At a preview, Josh is among the packed house that witnesses Rich Rafelson, the Peakmont Playhouse's gay, middle-aged artistic director who has miscast himself as Peter, plunge to his death when his flying harness breaks during his preposterously elaborate curtain call. The police suspect Josh's friend P.J. Cullen, a crew member who tended the harness (which was deliberately cut) and had squabbled with Rich. Not only does Josh have to get her pal off the hook, but she must juggle beaux when her California lover shows up unexpectedly in New York to complicate her off-and-on relationship with cop Phillip Gerrard. While happily distracted by the tangle of enmities that swirled around Rich, she stumbles onto the trail of an old, unresolved crime. Dentinger chucks in the kitchen sink and a brazen amount of camp, but exhibits wit enough, in the finale, to save her from her own chutzpa. (Oct.)