THE DEAD OF MIDNIGHT

Canadian poet Hunter makes her U.S. debut with an enjoyably quirky cast of characters and an intriguing (though not totally fulfilled) premise. A book group meets regularly at the Mystery Au Lait Café to discuss mysteries, and lately they're hooked on a series dubbed the Midnight Mystery Series. The books, published by a local small press and authored by a mysterious writer, are connected by the fact that the murders in each book take place at midnight. As sales and anticipation for each new release build dramatically, members of the group experience incidents eerily like those in the books. Sarah Petursson, estranged from her musician-husband, Peter, is attacked just like a character in the first book in the series. Later, Peter's current girlfriend, journalist Cady Brown, is brutally murdered, again in a fashion detailed in one of the books. Somehow connected to all these murderous events is the work of Sarah's late mother, a Canadian poet of some repute, who died when Sarah was a child. Someone—could it be the murderer?—is after the late poet's papers and, in turn, these papers seem somehow connected to the real identity of the Midnight Mystery Series author. Though experienced mystery fans will have figured out a number of the plot twists well ahead of the book's amateur sleuths, Hunter handles her complex plot and large cast of characters with great skill. (Sept. 16)

Correction: The literary agent for Peter Tremayne's Our Lady of Darkness: A Celtic Mystery (Forecasts, Aug. 12) is Charles Schlessiger at Brandt & Brandt.