Until Proven Innocent

In her fourth appearance (after The Gemini Man ), freelance crime writer Liz Connors of Cambridge, Mass., leads a group of interested friends--two from the Cambridge police force and two local reporters--to solve a confluence of crimes that threaten the career and life of her lover, police Lt. Jack Lingeman. A broad sweep of seemingly unrelated crimes--the killing of a local businessman, the vicious serial beatings of women and murder of another--is followed by charges of corruption levied against Jack by a former cop. Soon Jack is charged with rape by a woman whose son he had arrested years before. When Jack is jailed after that woman is killed with his gun, Liz and company go into action. Liz is thoroughly likable in her worry and the action she takes to save Jack; she disappoints, however, in failing to make connections between crimes that the reader can't miss, and she jettisons her hard-won credibility in the melodramatic finale. Excluding these lapses, however, Kelly's heroine is as recognizable as a neighbor or friend, and as such, her adventures earn our interest. (July)