A Death for a Double

The seventh of Giroux's A Death For . . . series ( . . . a Dreamer ) is a contrived, unconvincing exercise. At the request of his secretary's nephew, Robert Forsythe, an amateur sleuth and reportedly ``the foremost barrister in London,'' drops everything to visit the garishly remodeled English country home of Anthony Funicelli, an American businessman of dubious reputation. Also present are Funicelli's young and pregnant second wife, his imperious mother, his grown twins, his cousin Fredo and a Mexican houseboy. The needlessly complicated plot, involving the deaths of Fredo and the simpleton son of a local family, turns on a sterilization operation and the flouting of a widely known, immutable rule of genetics. Padded dialogue, inconsistent characterization and arbitrarily bizarre details deprive this tale of any chance it might have had to divert or entertain. (Feb.)