When Reason Sleeps

Sehler is a pseudonym for Rex Burns, creator of the Gabe Wager and Devlin Kirk mysteries, who here introduces another series hero, former government investigator Jack Steele. Dismissed from the Marine Corps after blowing the whistle on Washington corruption, Steele returns to his home town of San Diego, Calif., where he is asked to trace the runaway granddaughter of an old family friend. He quickly learns that the girl is involved with a satanic cult, that she is pregnant and that others in the group have died at apparently regular intervals. Members of the cult are expectedly close-mouthed; then a young man who is a lifelong friend of the runaway's and who seems intimately connected to all the goings-on, also disappears. This is pretty standard PI fare; Steele's plodding investigation finally leads him to a deadly struggle in the Colorado mountains and the revelation of a villain whose identity most readers will have guessed well in advance. (Aug.)