Epilogue for Murder

Setting his debut in the Florida panhandle, Shriner enters--and holds his own in--a crime territory staked out by a number of acknowledged masters. Emulating his fictional heroes, Atlanta ex-academic Bennett Cole has traded his ivory-tower existence for the life of a shamus. Investigating the purported suicide--by a gunshot wound in a locked hotel room--of his favorite crime writer, Bennett lands knee-deep in redneck lowlife in the backwater Florida town of Steinhatchee. There he befriends the ambitious waitress at the local bar and her smooth-talking boss, aggravates the local chief of police and runs afoul of a monosyllabic father and his two less than lovable sons, all three of whom are mean, stupid and reeking of criminality. While some of Shriner's characters don't develop much beyond bare-bones caricature, the police chief and believably inept Bennett, often terrified for his life, are fully fleshed out. Like much Florida crime fiction, this work has environmental subplots running through it. A hint of continuing romance with one of the local residents promises a fine wrinkle for the next in the series. (May)