Haunting Rachel

In Hooper's fiction (Finding Laura), death is a permeable membrane, not a brick wall. The ghost of Rachel Grant's fiance of 10 years past returns to sentimental effect in the author's pale new novel of romantic suspense. Rachel was 19 when silver-haired cargo pilot Thomas Sheridan disappeared on a mysterious flight to South America. Yet a decade later, when family estate matters bring Rachel back to Virginia from her life as a designer in New York, she starts catching glimpses of a fair-haired man who has just got to be Tom. Then Rachel's car goes out of control because somebody has cut her brake line. Is the man, who calls himself Adam Delafield, the culprit or Rachel's guardian angel--or both? Adam says he has come to town to repay the $3 million Rachel's late father, Duncan Grant, lent him on a handshake, but she doesn't know whether to trust him. Ultimately, trust provides the subtext for the novel. Rachel is flanked by tough-talking men with hard-voweled names, attorney Graham Becket and businessman Nick Ross, each with his own mysterious agenda that may imperil Rachel or save her life. Unfortunately, Hooper's heroine is too vague a character to compel the reader's concern, and her story is not so much enriched by plot threads as freighted with them--hints at CIA escapades, South American dictatorships and judge-fixing are left dangling. Most of the sex, tenderness and humor are allocated to Tom's sister, Mercy, and Ross, moreover, draining the novel of much-needed emotional tension. (Dec.)