Alpine Advocate

Daheim's ( Holy Terrors ) amateur-sleuth whodunits unfortunately recycle well-worn elements: mistaken identities, long-hidden secrets, convoluted familial relationships and heavy-handed clues. Even a new heroine, newspaper publisher Emma Lord, and a change in locale, here the mythical small town of Alpine, Wash., can't rescue this ho-hum mystery. Chris Martinez, black sheep of the rich and powerful Doukas clan, has returned to Alpine for the first time since he was a boy. Soon his cousin Mark Doukas is bludgeoned to death, with the alienated Chris the leading suspect. Then Emma's deliveryman, Gibb Frazier, is murdered, followed shortly by the discovery of a skeleton in an abandoned mine shaft--which proves to be the remains of Chris's long-lost father. Emma, ably assisted by town historian/gossip Vida Runkel, must unravel the tangled relationships that link virtually every inhabitant of Alpine in order to solve the murders. Despite the complex game of ``who-married-whom-and-who-had-whose-child,'' readers will have no trouble spotting clues, as Daheim appears to do everything in her power to call attention to them short of printing them in capital letters. (Dec.)