The Ditched Blonde

He's perhaps the last word in laconic lonerdom; he's drifter Carl Wilcox (A Way with Widows), traversing Depression-era small-town America, taking on odd jobs and solving mysteries. Here, he finds himself in Greenhill, S.D., where, four years earlier, teenager Genevieve Sinclair, popular and pregnant, was killed, hit repeatedly by a car. She left behind a bunch of boy suitors and two older men, all clearly infatuated. The unsolved case has obsessed Officer Schoop, the local cop who couldn't solve it, and he persuades Wilcox, who has a bit of rep, to take a crack at it. Although Adams spends too long attempting to drill holes in the most obvious suspect's alibi (which involves a married woman and a missing buddy), he sustains his own reputation for excellence by slyly pulling his narrative punches. His deliberately barren prose manages to echo the times and the terrain with remarkable effect, and Wilcox is just enough of a cross between tender and tough to be believable. (Sept.)