Presence of Mind

Meet Jeremy Ransom, a veteran homicide detective in Chicago who considers most of his partners ``twits'' and is currently rereading Dickens, a chapter or two of Bleak House while soaking in the tub at the end of the day. He sounds unlikely but is, in fact, the charmingly believable center of playwright Hunter's debut novel. Three recent, seemingly random murders are connected when elderly Emily Charters identifies the victims as fellow members of the audience at a performance of Love's Labour Lost at a small North Side storefront theater. Emily goes to the police with her observation, but only after more killings does Ransom finally believe that the audience must have witnessed something that incriminates the killer. An array of predictable motivations--naked ambition, artistic devotion, unrequited love--are planted among the suspects and the overplayed resolution reveals the killer in a light that doesn't jibe with earlier presentations. Despite these flaws, Hunter achieves a certain freshness with his material, mostly by means of Ransom's consistent, credible eccentricity and the warm portrayal of plucky, uncertain Emily Charters. (Jan.)