The Year of the Monkey

Bonnie Indermill, the sleuth introduced last year in The Letter of the Law, is again involved in trouble as soon as she joins a training program at a shady financial institution called Creative Financial Ventures. One of Bonnie's fellow trainees is glib, charming, irresponsible ``Fast'' Eddie Fong, who has links to the Chinatown underworld. After the company's CEO is murdered and Eddie becomes the protege and lover of v-p Charlotte Smoot, Eddie seems to have some secret deals buried in his computer terminal. Various unpleasant typesin and out of the officeconverge when Bonnie inadvertently stumbles upon a fortune in cash, and immediately finds that her life is in danger. The central concept surrounding the mystery is as trendy as today's financial news, and Berry again does a fine job of conveying life in the Big Apple, and especially the forced intimacy of office relationships. Except for the pleasingly ordinary Bonnie, however, the other players are drawn with too broad a hand. Their exaggerated personalities and physical characteristics render them close to caricatures, especially the other female characters, who are dupes of passion to a tasteless and demeaning degree. One hopes Berry will involve spunky Bonnie with more realistic characters next time. (June)