In the Dark

Brennan, author of two Liz Wareham mysteries, including Headhunt , introduces L.A. film actress Emily Silver in this engaging suspense thriller. Orphaned at the age of nine when her parents were slain in New York by a Mel Torme-voiced murderer, Emily has since built a successful career on the West Coast. But then she hears the killer's distinctive androgynous voice in a darkened movie house and is jolted into a search for the truth about the 20-year-old deaths. When her lover, Mike Florio, is killed soon after agreeing to help her, Emily embarks on a fast-paced New York/Key West/L.A. search, aided by Mike's New York friend, Dev Hannagan, who reads Stendahl in French, spouts Latin and endures his writer's block by detecting. Quickly becoming a love interest, Dev is only one in a rich cast that includes Emily's dowager grandmother, an aging gay actor, a mysterious police sergeant and a nun. Brennan's tight, intricate plot gradually elucidates the toll her ``narcissistic bisexual satyr'' of a father exacted from those around him. The only disappointments here are the last puzzle piece, which seems too small to bear the weight of making sense of the other elements, and the mainly likable Emily's tendency toward snappish truculence. (Apr.)