Justice in Manhattan: The Adams Round Table

The authors are an ad hoc gang of New York writers who regularly meet to chat and tell tales. Perhaps the most famous is Mary Higgins Clark. In this, their third thematically based collection of original stories (after Missing in Manhattan), Mickey Friedman leads off with a fine story about a woman reporter's scheme to take revenge on her overpriced hair stylist, who nevertheless gets the last laugh. Justin Scott offers a bleaker work about the fairly complex plan that a lonely immigrant who runs a handbag-repair shop hatches in order to prevent a youngster from killing a hired gun. Dorothy Salisbury Davis is romantic and longwinded over a priest, a married woman and a spying kid; Thomas Chastain is short, sweet and to-the-point in his tale of a wealthy widow who hires a young woman companion after suffering a long string of clingy male companions. While not necessarily outstanding, this collection is well worth reading. (Oct.)