Immediate Prospect of Being Hanged

One of the chief pleasures of this intelligent legal thriller is narrator Patt Starbuck, detective with the D.A.'s office. Starbuck has cheerful contempt for his politically ambitious boss, John Michael Keough, who's anxious to convict prominent golfer Wylie Carpenter of asphyxiating his blue-blooded, pill-addicted wife Rebecca in tony Woodedge, Mass. But the state police suspect the Carpenters' gardener, a young stud hired by Rebecca, while Starbuck believes his own hated distant cousin Dodge Patterson, Wylie's golf partner, was involved. The leisurely paced story keeps you guessing right through the closing courtroom drama in which Starbuck, as a witness, reopens unresolved wounds from his family past. But the trial is only a prelude to the jolting surprise ending. Walker ( Rules of the Knife Fight ) serves up fully developed characters, seedy local politics and an ironic gumshoefull of acerbic, hilarious comments and devastating one-liners about the suspectswho grows on the reader. 20,000 first printing. (Apr.)