BACK TO SCHOOL MURDER

The Maine village of Tinker's Cove is again awash in murder and mayhem (Trick or Treat Murder, 1996, etc.), but not to worry- -Lucy Stone, wife to contractor Bill, mother of four; part-timer at the local paper; evening student at the local college; and above all, amateur sleuth—is on the case. Carol Crane, new assistant principal at the elementary school, has rescued a disabled child from inside the school just minutes before an explosive device goes off—an anonymous warning call to the police had evacuated everyone else. Lucy, helping Pennysaver editor Ted Stillings write the story, is intrigued by Carol's past, in which heroic rescues seem to have figured prominently, and by her connections to Lucy's seductive English professor Quentin Rea and to the town's fundamentalist preacher DeWalt Smythe and school politics. Carol's background assumes more urgency when she's discovered smothered to death in her apartment and well-liked high-school coach Josh Cunningham is charged with the murder. While police chief Crowley rests on his laurels, Lucy, unconvinced, scurries from home to job, to class, to daughter's day-care, to supermarket, finally, between chores, engineering a near deadly confrontation with the real killer. A tad more substantial than the author's previous outings, but still bogged down in domestic detail, vacuous dialogue, and our heroine's mopey musings. Harmless ho-hum.