This Glittering World

A lackluster guy finds purpose in the pursuit of justice in Greenwood's slack latest (after The Hungry Season). When Ben Bailey, an adjunct history professor and part-time bartender mildly dissatisfied with his life and engagement to occasionally shrewish Sara, finds the badly beaten body of a young Native American on his lawn, he's driven to find out what happened. His quest takes on a new dimension once the young man dies and his death goes all but unnoticed. Ben soon meets the victim's sister, Shadi, and falls for her while they investigate her brother's murder, but by the time he tries to call off his engagement, Sara is pregnant and Ben is torn between the life that's being planned for him and the more adventurous one that he thinks he wants. Greenwood's Flagstaff, Ariz., is a convincing one, more so than the forced premise of Ben's sorrow binding him to Shadi, and while the plot manages a few surprises, Ben's too passive for a man on a mission. (Jan.)