Electric City

In a rambling adventure, following Amateur Night , Jane da Silva, Beck's Seattle sleuth who must investigate hopeless cases in order to inherit her eccentric uncle's fortune, searches for a missing woman, a recent winner of $20,000 on TV's Jeopardy! Irene March, employed by a news clipping service, has been missing for a week when two co-workers ask Jane to find her. Jane learns that Irene had developed a blackmailing operation using the news stories she came across in her job and that at least two of her victims--a woman exploiting her daughter to raise funds for a bogus operation and another whose distinctive car was seen leaving the scene of a hit-and-run accident--had reason to want Irene dead. When Irene's body is found at the bottom of a ravine, Jane sticks with the case and gets caught up in a complex chain of events that leads her into a confrontation with a killer in Electric City, near the Grand Coulee Dam. Although Beck gives readers an appealing tour of Washington State and provides Jane with a country-singer love interest, this tale is underpowered. (Aug.)