Still Waters

Jill Gallagher, a hard-up, has-been journalist and old friend of PI Helen Black, is onto a story that could resurrect her career. But her comeback is cut short when she falls to her death near Still Waters Lodge in northern California. The police call it an accident; however, just hours before her death Jill had left a message on Helen's answering machine saying that she was being followed. Helen and her lover Frieda Lawrence visit the lodge where Jill was staying and meet strong reactions among her acquaintances there: Miranda Benson, the lodge owner's daughter, seems devastated by Jill's death, while guest Amy O'Neill takes time out from sparring with her husband to snarl that ``as far as I'm concerned the bitch can rot in hell.'' Helen's snooping turns up a hand-drawn map Jill squirreled away that leads to a shack in the woods filled with photographic equipment and haunted in the dead of night--by a Catholic priest. While Welch ( Murder by the Book ) capably leads the reader into Jill's tangled relationships and related mysteries, the effect is diminished by tiresome love spats between Helen and Frieda. (Jan.)