Death Prone

A self-reflective conceit marks Curzon's ninth British police procedural featuring Superintendent Mike Yeadings. The tale, which is peopled by characters who belong, observes constable Rosemary Zyczynski, to ``body-in-the-library crime fiction,'' is ill-served by a threadbare, suspenseless plot of inheritance and adultery. Nonagenarian Hadrian Bascombe summons his possible heirs to say that he will leave his fortune to only one of them. Immediately afterwards, the two youngest, cousins Dominic and Francine, are injured in a suspicious car accident. Soon other family members die off--one is electrocuted in his orchid hothouse, another is pushed under a tube train--in what looks like a tontine. Tangled rumors of incest unravel to expose an ornate, incredible conclusion. (Mar.)