cover image Love Nor Money: A Catherine Sayler Mystery

Love Nor Money: A Catherine Sayler Mystery

Linda Grant. Scribner Book Company, $19.95 (277pp) ISBN 978-0-684-19379-3

Guilt and revenge fuel this neatly crafted mystery, third in a series by Grant ( Blind Trust ). Furious at a client's double-cross, San Francisco PI Catherine Sayler distracts herself from revenge to investigate, at the request of her friend Joe, the death of his cousin Mitch, a recovering alcoholic who had threatened to expose the prominent jurist who molested him as a child. Judge Samuel Reiter could wallpaper his chambers with awards given him for his work with boys' clubs; unfortunately, Catherine proves he's been collecting darker rewards too. With the net drawing tight around the judge and plans for avenging herself simmering, Catherine is saddled with her alienated 14-year-old niece, Molly, who has run away from suburbia. Then the judge is killed, suspicion falls on Joe, and Molly gets kidnapped. Grant juggles her plot smoothly, keeping all balls up in the air until the very end, when readers may be disappointed at the way they fall. The scenes of Molly's rebellion against responsible adults--a nearly seamless wall of loud music, sloppy habits and weird friends with odd hairdos--offer priceless shots of Catherine wryly miffed to be labeled one of Them. Mystery Guild selection; paperback rights to Fawcett. (Dec.)