Harm's Way: 9a Novel

The extravagantly showy murder of a very private man opens White's engrossing fourth story about Colorado psychologist Alan Gregory (following Higher Authority). Alan's friend and neighbor, Peter Arvin, a skilled woodworker and solo mountain climber, is found tortured and bleeding to death on top of a grand piano on the stage of the Boulder Theatre. After Peter dies at the hospital where his wife, Adrienne, is a urologist, police detective Sam Purdy asks Alan to work up an informal profile of the killer to see whether it matches that of the person being sought for a similar murder in Denver. Complying with Adrienne's desire to be able to tell her young son, Jason, more about his father, Alan also investigates Peter's past. These linked efforts, soon complicated by a third theater murder in a nearby town, call on the full reach of Alan's professional skills and lead him into unexpected territory, psychological and geographic. He visits Jackson, Wyo., to find out from Peter's family about a forest fire Peter experienced as a young man, and he encounters danger at the construction site of a Colorado casino where more murders are discovered. All the while, he observes the relationships of others--Peter and Adrienne's unique marriage; the attraction of the woman cop in charge of the Denver murder to Sam Purdy; his own attraction to Jason Arvin's young nanny--through the lens of his love for his new ( and second) wife, Lauren, an assistant DA who makes some cogent observations of her own about the crimes. White, a psychologist, informs this intricate tale with convincing emotion. (Mar.)