Brothers in Blood

This undistinguished addition to a series that had a strong start in the first-rate Murder in Store places Quint McCauley, a PI in semi-rural Foxport, Ill., in between two battling brothers. Brig Tanner is running for mayor of Foxport; brother Jubal is the family black sheep who raises Morgan horses. Brig, who has bought a horse that Jubal covets, bests Jubal in a barroom brawl; when Brig's girlfriend is murdered, Jubal hires Quint to clear his name. As the siblings quarrel over money and steeds and land and women, innocents get killed. Horse lore and feuding figure large here; Quint and his lady Elaine go riding when they aren't fighting. Brod fails to engage her readers with this plot that, like horseback riding in a ring, expends considerable energy but doesn't get very far. (Oct.)