Foolproof

The glamour, glitz and chintz of L.A. buzz throughout the fourth Iris Thorne mystery (after Fast Friends, 1997), a frothy confection of sex, murder and deceit which requires the suspension of critical taste as well as disbelief. Iris, a rising star at the brokerage firm McKinney Alitzer, is already dealing with a back-stabbing regional manager when she is thrown into an even worse situation. Her friends Bridget and Kip Cross have used his programming skills and her business savvy to turn Pandora Software into a wildly successful computer gaming company. But their marriage is crumbling and, not long after Bridget decides to take the company public, she's murdered. Naturally, Kip is the main suspect. Iris is named in Bridget's will as trust administrator to run Pandora, which lands her smack in the middle of a nasty, multiparty fight. The rambling plot involves multiple murders; a Texas business raider's attempts to control Pandora Software; adultery; interoffice intrigue at McKinney Alitzer and Pandora; and a little girl who saw her mother's murder but repressed her memory of it. Pugh doesn't seem to try to craft all these elements together with any elegance. In addition to nervous verbal energy (much of it expended on describing what characters wear), she relies on plot contrivances (some, like cars that don't start, used more than once) and the titillating atmosphere of narcissistic L.A. to hold a reader's interest. (Apr.)