Second Chance

In this flimsy tale a Cincinnati PI Harry Stoner seems a shadow puppet of the once provocative and introspective detective seen in such earlier series installments as Extenuating Circumstances . Stoner is hired by psychiatrist Phil Pearson and second wife Louise to locate Phil's daughter Kirsty, a University of Chicago student. At the school, Stoner learns that Kirsty's brother Ethan solicited her help in confronting the ex-convict who, he believes, killed their mother. As Stoner unearths the records to check whether Estelle Pearson committed suicide, as the police ruled, or was murdered by psychopath Herbert Talmadge, as Ethan suspects, police find Ethan's Volare on the bank of the Miami River (near the site where his mother's body was found), empty except for blood-stained lingerie. Fearing that Kirsty and Ethan have been murdered, Stoner steps up his search through a maze of cold trails and long-forgotten sins. It's bad enough to offer an implausible plot, beginning with the Pearsons' unlikely hiring of a private investigator, and a predictable villain, but reducing Stoner to a formula gumshoe devoid of insight will be a heartbreaker for his fans. Mysterious Book Club selection. (May)