Deadly Resolutions

A competent, successful and very likable female detective makes her first appearance in this well-executed debut. Abigail Doyle, a systems designer for factories and businesses who has also had occasion to act as a private detective, is one of an environmental group that discovers the body of Gen. Martin Thorne of the Corps of Engineers in an abandoned bunker on Rockaway Beach in New York's borough of Queens. After antagonism flares between Doyle and homicide detective Margaret Standish and because the group's members are suspect, Doyle decides to investigate on her own. Also hired by the general's mother, Doyle finds the general has an unsavory reputation--shady business deals, using his influence to overturn environmental legislation, bullying junior officers, frequenting sordid gay bars. When the general's wife is murdered, Doyle is once again a prime suspect. Meanwhile, she and Standish build a wary, grudging but mutually respectful relationship. Depicting a fast-moving, zestful New York, Ashwood-Collins has created a detective for our time--a hard-driving, high-flying woman in sure command of herself and her destiny. (Sept.)