Bishop's Revenge

Playing to fans of the late Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe/Archie Goodwin series, Love pens the fourth adventure (following Bloody Ten ) of wheelchair-bound Bishop Francis X. Regan, of the Archdiocese of New York, and Davey Goodman, his live-in PI/assistant. Socialite Ladd Compton is killed during a robbery at his parents' lush Manhattan home, and Eddie Goode, the small-time felon who put Regan in a wheelchair eight years earlier, is charged with murder. But Goode, whose prints are on the murder gun found nearby, insists he was set up and his lawyer convinces Regan to help in the man's defense. Another murder, that of the gangster's ex-wife (and Compton's former girlfriend), focuses the duo's suspicions on Compton family members and their intimates. Regan unmasks the killer at the expected finale with all the suspects and the police assembled in his home on West 37th St. With the Bishop as shut-in brain and Davey the worldly-wise legman and narrator, Love hews closely to the pattern of the originals but gets details wrong, especially the fine points of the Manhattan setting and the characters' New Yorkese. Essentially this mystery misses the mark by at least as many blocks as separate the Bishop's residence from Wolfe's townhouse on West 35th. (Apr.)