Willful Neglect

There's a lot of loss in Morgan's debut, a mediocre mystery whose easy swipes at racism deteriorate into boilerplate moralizing. First, there's the loss of Jordan Ambrose, a five-year-old African American boy who dies of a bacterial infection at St. Mary's hospital in Springwell, a moribund town 60 miles from Seattle. The grieving parents approach Noah Richards, a white attorney who has fled the grind of L.A. corporate paperwork for the simpler life of country lawyering in the town where his father (now dead) practiced. Reluctant at first, Richards eventually comes to believe that Jordan's death was due to negligence--especially after several specialists back him up and when Nita Barnes, a nurse who was genuinely concerned about Jordan's care, leaves town hastily. Richards doesn't like the looks of Barnes's neanderthal neighbor, who raises pit bulls and has ties to one of the doctors involved in Jordan's case. Still reeling from his wife's death from cancer several years earlier, Richards slowly comes to the conclusion that Jordan was allowed to die because he was black; and this leads to yet another loss--of his faith in his hometown. A decent man, Richards calls up sympathy easily. But Morgan indulges in melodrama and stock characterizations, as when she describes a racist doctor as having ""gingery hair with... a strong Boston Irish accent."" In the end, her mystery founders on its one-dimensional treatment of the evils of bigotry. (Aug.)