Three Days for Emeralds

This is Eberhart's 59th novel of romance and suspense, appearing 50 years after her first, and the familiar elements are all in place. Innocent young Lacy Wales lives with her stepmother in the house on New York's elegant Gramercy Park left to her by her father. Because money is tight, Lacy has taken a secretarial job with a Wall Street law firm, where she receives a letter from an old boarding-school friend whom she has not seen in many years. Lacy visits the friend, finding her disheveled, terrified and, after taking a salutory drink with Lacy, dead. Before Lacy learns who killed her friend, she will have cause to doubt her own mysterious fiancewhose picture she finds in the friend's bedroom, her handsome young boss, her stepmother and that woman's two Latin American half-brothers, whose sudden appearance at the house on Gramercy Park is as much of a surprise as is the fact of their existence. The emeralds of the title are mined in Latin America and provide the money that's behind the murder and the soft-core mayhem in this novel's weakly contrived plot. Except for an occasional reference to highways and word processors, Lacy and company could have been lifted from a 19th century drawing room. Sadly, character is no more convincing than action in this poorly edited offering from a past master of the genre. (February 15)