Catnap

In her fourth adventure, Kate Baeier, the ex-PI who's now a war correspondent, returns warily to London, which she had abruptly fled five years earlier after her lover's death. Taking a side trip to the shabby area where she used to live, she is promptly mugged. Then she runs into an old acquaintance who reawakens old pain by promising to send her a photograph of her long-dead lover, Sam Layton. Although she longs to escape London a second time, she is forced to stay after the house she is occupying is vandalized and the repair of damages requires her presence. Kate drops in on an old friend who offers a chilly reception and is rudely rebuffed by Sam's father. A former colleague finally confronts her with the damage her sudden departure did to her friends and clients. Kate tries to make amends by tracking down Agnes Wilson, who wanted help in recovering her pension, but is threatened by the pensioner's only surviving relative, someone Sam was also investigating at the time of his death. Struggling with grief and guilt, Kate begins to traceAgnes's missing pension, despite repeated threats and a growing conviction that Sam's death was not an accident. Kate needs a deus ex machina to get out of her final confrontation, and she seems to settle for too little in the end. But Slovo deftly considers the issue of accountability--Kate's and that of institutions--in a swiftly moving tale of a woman facing herself and her past. (Dec.)