Lockhart's Nightmare

This second collaboration (after last year's entertaining Fairchild's Passage) by Barton and Williams is a fast-paced but unlikely cross-country chase--by horse, buggy, train and blimp--with bewildered innocents pursued by relentless lawmen and mysterious killers. Wrongly accused of a fur bank robbery, Civil War vet James Lockhart and vivacious grifter Marian Taylor escape jail determined to find the real killers and clear their own names. Running pell-mell after clues and false trails, the couple don a variety of disguises, unable to trust anyone, even each other. Starting out as a predictable hayburner, this tale soon tests the reader's patience with preposterous shoot-'em-ups, James Bond-like escapes and detective work (from both lawmen and the accused) that's as full of holes as the bodies that litter these adventures. (June)