Sunflower

The wrinkle in this brisk thriller (Powers's first, after a successful series of Regency romances) is that the vicious serial killer stalking blonde-haired, blue-eyed little girls in the bucolic town of River Oaks, Wis., leaves a trail of sunflower seeds beside each of his victims. Ambitious detective and single mother Lieutenant Sheila Brady picks up the clue, but it doesn't do the police much good: the economy of this small town is based on sunflower farming, and everyone has something to do with the ubiquitous flowers. Sheila is confident that the so-called Goldilocks Killer won't target her dark-haired, brown-eyed daughter, Meg. But as the fall Sunflower Festival approaches, the psychopath sees Sheila interviewed on TV; she is blonde and wears dangling gold sunflower earrings, and he confuses her with the woman who long ago triggered his murderous obsession. To lure Sheila into his trap, the killer abducts Meg, galvanizing Sheila and her boss, police chief Hank Harker, to hunt him down. Powers's treatment of such issues as sexual harassment on the police force and the perils of vigilante justice is more convincing than her superficial rendering of the killer's psychology. The eventual revelation of the killer's identity involves several implausible disclosures, mainly that nobody in town remembered a murder involving sunflowers 20 years earlier, or noticed that the suspect in that case is back in the area again, living under a thinly disguised name. But Sheila Brady is a quick-witted heroine whose courage and moral values make her an appealing protagonist. Editor, Chuck Adams; agent, Karen Solem. (Sept.)