Red Knight

This peculiarly appealing New Orleans mystery offers twice the pleasure--and about the same nutritional value--of a hot beignet. Davis ( The Murder of Frau Schutz ) brings back series PI Dub Greenert, now recovering from a cardiac episode but shakily on the job. ``Visibly lily-white'' Pittsburgh transplant Dub and his live-in lady love, Vonna, who is black, both work for the mostly black detective agency run by pervasively fey Honore St. Jean Devraix. Devraix sends them to look into a mail bombing at the home of a local civil rights legend, blueblood Raleigh Lee Menzies. Menzies made hordes of Old South enemies when he backed integration in the 1960s, and new black enemies in the 1990s when he published a tell-all book about the early leaders. Though rebuffed by Menzies himself, Dub and Vonna are called back by his boozy wife and wealthy family friend when Raleigh Lee is kidnapped. Dub chases redneck herrings and is abused by the FBI, stonewalled by the Menzies family retainer, manhandled by city cops, messed with by the Mafia and nearly killed by the bad guys before he hits on the truth behind the legend and a mystery woman. Davis runs his quirky cast through a thin but serviceable plot to a feasible denoument. (July)