TROPIC OF MURDER

There's gold in them thar hills again, but only trace amounts in this sixth Connor Westphal mystery. No one in Flat Skunk, Calaveras County, California, puts much stock in old Sluice Jackson even when he's sober, but there's no denying that what he's just pulled out of his miner's poke has a persuasive shine to it. "Gold," says Sluice, displaying a tooth-sized nugget. First witnesses to the find-if indeed it is one-are Connor, demon reporter (sexy and deaf), and p.i. Dan Smith, her lover (an attentive hunk). Since both like bucolic Flat Skunk the way it is, neither feels sanguine about the prospect of prospectors descending en masse. And they're right to be concerned, since a virulent case of gold fever is accompanied by the expected vicious behavior. For starters, someone burns down Sluice's cabin. Then there's a pair of killings, brutal and inexplicable. Meantime, Josh Littlefield, an old college friend of Connor's, suddenly turns up in Flat Skunk-a "deafie" married unhappily to a "hearie." Could they be in any way connected to Sluice's strike? When Sheriff Mercer arrests Josh on a charge of homicide, Connor knows it's time to dust off her Nancy Drew cap. Legally perky Connor (Blind Side, 2001, etc.) continues to appeal despite criminally porous plotting.

In one of Raphael's last two mysteries, there was no murder for the first two-thirds of the book, and in the most recent, there was no corpse. Now a corpse doesn't show until past the two-thirds mark, and whether it bespeaks murder or accident is uncertain. Raphael's writing, however, suggests a deepening gloom and impending trouble both in the wintry groves of academic Michigan and the sun-kissed tropics of Serenity, the resort to which Nick Hoffman and his partner, Stefan, flee from political infighting at the venal university. Raphael keeps us turning pages with mouthwatering descriptions of buffets and a paradise brimming with cheerful attendants, and even without a corpse, he ratchets up tension with rumors of ghosts and some very substantial fellows threatening to trade blows. Some mystery fans may feel let down by the resolution, which flouts genre expectations, while others may cheer it and welcome Raphael's innovativeness. Whitney Scott
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