Point of Darkness

Following the first two estimable Sam Dean novels (Blood Rights and The Late Candidate), the third disappoints with a jumbled, lifeless narrative that traverses several cultures but fails to evoke their life and color. Dean, a Caribbean-born, London-raised journalist, comes to New York City to search for Mary, the missing daughter of a dying friend. He finds Mary's friends in Jamaica, Queens, and speaks to the couple for whom she worked as a domestic, and even contacts their son who is a power in city politics. Nearly everyone with whom Dean tangles is a transplanted soul, yet this disparate group is given mostly generic voices. As the body count rises, Dean heads west and then back to London before the resolution of this tale through which he, the narrator, moves more as an absence than a coalescing presence. (Apr.)