Kill the Hundredth Monkey: A Randall Gatsby Sierra Mystery

Hill (Shoot the Piper) mines the counterculture once more as his smug and opinionated PI narrator, Randall Gatsby Sierra, traffics in more political correctness than readers may tolerate. After basketball star and Rhodes scholar Dylan Rutledge is shot dead outside an Atlanta nightclub, Sierra is hired to investigate by the leader of the commune where the youth had been raised by an organized, well-funded collection of latter-day hippies in a beautiful North Carolina valley. Sierra learns that Dylan liked the ladies a lot; he also discovers that the commune has angered various interests with their radical views and militant methodology. Sierra finds Dylan's best basketball buddy hiding out in the backwoods, and more deaths follow. As Sierra tells us more than we want to know about his philosophy of life, Hill tells us too little about Dylan and detecting. Most of the dialogue, especially Sierra's conversations with commune members, are excuses to pass judgment on everything from music to morals. It all seems oddly dated, and, in the resolution, even the victim is cheated. (Mar.)