A Very Proper Death

Marni Verstak wonders whether the frightening phone messages about her secret past are the work of a rival Boston real-estate firm trying to harm her own firm, her former lover, her psychotherapist, or someone else. Reprint.

Boston realtor Marni Verstak's terror begins with a 2 a.m. phone call suavely threatening the life of Matthew, the son she's been hiding with her Vermont friends Eva and Steve for five years from her estranged husband, Anderson Thorpe III, and his omnipotent mother. The next day the foreman on a restoration project of Marni's is killed by bogus muggers; when another call sends her running up to Vermont, she finds Eva and Steve gone with Matthew, their own sudden flight to her place cut short by a collision that's left Steve dead and Eva in a coma. When sympathetic Sgt. Jake Murphy identifies Steve as a prominent drug courier, Marni thinks the mystery can't get any more tangled or threatening, but she's wrong: a last dinner with her ex- husband will lead to even scarier revelations--and Marni's arrest for murder--before she and Jake finally figure out who's out to get her, and why. The multiple villains--Marni's paranoia turns out to be all too justified--are as improbable as the child whose existence can't be revealed to his father. But the pseudonymous Juniper's first mystery- -despite its unlikely premises--sweeps you up with a kind of nightmare logic. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Boston real estate broker Marni Verstak becomes involved in drug-trade violence in this fast-paced and effective mystery debut. An anonymous caller alludes to the death of Marni's young son, Matthew, born after her separation from secret homosexual Anderson Thorpe III. But Matthew is very much alive and hidden with friends so that Marni's domineering former mother-in-law will not try to acquire custody. Then a man renovating a house, owned by Marni and located in the deteriorating, drug-infested Jamaica Plain area, is slain. When Matthew is almost killed in a suspicious automobile accident, Marni determines to inform his father, who now has AIDS, about his existence, but she is thwarted. Then Anderson is found murdered, and Marni is arrested. As she struggles against the tightening coils of disaster, she has the support of two men--police investigator Jake Murphy and Anderson's boyhood friend and heir, flamboyant, slightly sinister Geraint Finnbar. Juniper (the pseudonym of a mainstream novelist) embroils her heroine in a suspenseful and complex plot, which ends with the promise of further terrors, as this volume is the first of a projected trilogy. Mystery Guild alternate.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This pseudonymous author has created a first crime novel that doesn't fit the standard "types." Despite its undeniable readability, the work has a distorted plot, a wildly inconsistent protagonist, and a heavy-handed mixture of implausibility, Gothic undertone, and breathy confusion. A mysterious late-night caller awakens an upscale Boston real estate agent, threatening death to her five-year-old son. Incredibly, Marni has kept the boy's existence secret from her gay ex-husband, his charismatically devilish lover, her Brahmin mother-in-law, and nearly everyone else. Wait for something better.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.