Prelude to Death: 9

Manhattan PI Blaine Stewart returns from Leap of Faith for her fourth caper. Shortly after her marriage to an FBI agent, Blaine gets a late-night call for help from her brother, Dick, in Key West. Dick, who last spoke to Blaine two years earlier, has been arrested for the murder of his lover, Corrye Edwards, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and the widow of a Cuban expatriate artist. While investigating in Key West, however, Blaine runs into roadblocks, one in the person of Ray Meltzer, local policeman who seems to have had more than a passing interest in Corrye, and another in Dick's own attorney, wheelchair-bound Laska Brown, who rubs Blaine the wrong way. Coping with the heat, the tourists and the temptations of Margaritaville, recovering alcoholic Blaine wades into an intrigue that could have international repercussions. Zukowski's main plot is pleasantly sleek, but her characters, with the exception of Blaine, are sometimes flat, and coincidences abound as Blaine gets help from her sister, Eileen, an attorney, and from a ``Deep Throat'' confidant in Washington. Improbabilities aside, the colorful locale and fast pace lead to a nail-biting conclusion. (Jan.)