Irish Gold

Greeley kicks off a new mystery series with this slick, if far-fetched, entry revolving around a hidden fortune in gold and the real-life, still unsolved, question of who killed Free Irish leader Michael Collins in 1922. Dermot Coyne, a 24-year-old American and sometime commodities trader, is in Dublin looking desultorily into why his maternal grandparents fled Ireland in 1922. An attack by three thugs aimed at getting Dermot to ``let the dead sleep in peace'' only inspires him to start digging in earnest-and, eventually, to uncover a cabal plotting the reunion of England and Ireland. Dermot shares his sleuthing with Nuala McGrail, a ravishing Trinity College student, singer and actress whom he hires to translate the Irish diaries his grandmother kept during the Troubles of 1919-1922. A typically hot-blooded Greeley hero, Dermot waxes ecstatic about Nuala's physique even while struggling to control his lust, which is never satisfied here-though promised sequels to this entertaining novel, including Irish Lace and Irish Linen, should give Dermot and Nuala further chances at romance, as well as at mystery. BOMC dual main selection; major ad/promo. (Nov.)