Death in a Dry Season

A well-crafted denouement saves this debut from collapsing under the weight of cluttered plotting. Frank Sweeney is the PI who retraces the last days of Nick D'Angelo, a former cop and family man who gambles his loser's life away in Atlantic City and dies in a firebombed lighthouse building. Nick did his last gambling at the shady Poseidon casino, where several other troubled gamblers from a local hostel also hung out. At the hostel, Frank encounters former sideshow oddities, a reclusive millionaire and a zealous leader. Wells leads off with a prologue in which a shadowy pyromaniac enjoys his work. Then Frank gets very friendly with Gwen, a driven journalist, and soon finds himself too close to the arsonist for comfort. Wells gives the narrating Frank a nice contemporary noir voice edged with a twist of Zen philosophizing. But his PI is a strangely unfocused creation made up of contrary impulses, whining about yuppies while he holds forth on antiques and cooking. Although the plot is predictably constructed, some of the high-tech gambling information is interesting and off-Boardwalk New Jersey comes to vivid life. Wells shows enough style and substance here to warrant further attention. (July)