The Indian Sign

Sleuth Milan Jacovich is working two cases with unsuspected complications.
Case number one comes with a visit from the owner of a small factory who has what he terms a "security problem." Hired to look into the background of one of his clients' employees. Milan discovers that the man is indeed not what he seems. But why isn't he? Milan must dig much deeper into what has turned out to be a very complex situation before he can answer that.
Milan's other case has a very different history. It's winter, the famous Lake Effect is whipping snow and cold onto Cleveland's east side, and on a bench across from Milan's apartment building an aged Native American man has been sitting stolidly for hours and hours, ignoring the brutal weather. The next morning Milan sees that the bench is empty - and then he learns that the old man has been found murdered.
The crime brings Edgar Ettawageshik to Milan; he wants the detective to find out why his grandfather was in Cleveland - and what connection that has to the kidnapping of his infant nephew from their tiny village in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. His first case, the security matter, is forcing Milan to make difficult moral choices. And while the other case gives him an opportunity to assuage some of the guilt he feels for not having done anything about the insistent presence of old Ettawageshik, it also confronts him with the blind hope of grieving parents who look to him for what he's very afraid could only be a miracle. Milan Jacovich will need all his skills, and even more luck, if he is going to be able to write a satisfactory "closed" on either of these tangled affairs.

Milan Jacovich is the kind of guy who insists on telling you about everything he puts in his mouth. Some of it is moderately interesting (where else could you learn that Winston cigarettes are "the vice of choice of most Slovenians"?). But does knowing where the middle-aged Cleveland PI buys his steaks ("Mister Brisket on Taylor Road") or chocolates for his date ("Mitchell Fine Candies on Lee Road") or his fresh-baked bagels ("I don't buy the packaged ones") really add anything but coy padding? These attempts at verisimilitude mostly get in the way of what could be two interesting storylines: Milan snoops (for money) on a toy-company accountant with a secret agenda while also searching (for free, out of guilt) for a kidnapped Native-American infant. The missing baby's great-grandfather squatted for two chilly February days on a bench across from Milan's house. Later, when the old man's body is fished out of the river, Milan regrets not having spoken to him. Investigating the accountant, Milan discovers that their mutual employerAa toy tycoonAis not only sleazy but positively lethal. In his 11th book about Milan, Roberts shows a strong social conscience on such subjects as poisonous toys and illegal adoptions. But he also overrates readers' interest in his hero's personal life. When a woman with whom Milan's had a loving relationship tells him she wants to just be friends, he says, "ConnieAdid it ever occur to you that this isn't about you?" Yeah, MilanAit has. Agent, Dominick Abel. (Aug.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.