Margin for Murder

Although this first novel is set in a London publishing house and involves the murder of an executive there, it could have been set anywhere, so scant is the book's publishing atmosphere. The author seems more interested in financial matters than in character development, including that of her heroine, one-eyed Aphra Colquhoun, 29, whose past, we learn, contains a deep secret. Aphra has been a commissioning editor at Gilman Press for just three months when Adrian Lynch, the editorial director, abruptly tells her that she must share more responsibility with her assistant, the obnoxious James Cook. That's unacceptable to Aphra, but before she can register an effective protest, Adrian is murdered in his office and she is discovered standing over his body. Freed on police bond, she has only three weeks to prove her innocence. Meanwhile she begins to receive threatening notes. After many misfires, her amateur detective work pays off but only through a series of hard-to-believe contrivances. (May)