THE THROAT
by Peter Straub
Submitted by the publisher to Kirkus too late to review, Straub's latest is a sequel to both his bestselling Koko (1988) and his less popular Mystery (1989), resurrecting characters from each (Tim Underhill of Koko and Tom Pasmore of Mystery among them) to investigate a series of killings known as the Blue Rose Murders. Straub himself appears in the story as the narrator's writing- collaborator (who ``drinks twenty-five-year-old malt whiskey, because he's that kind of guy''), a touch of metafiction in a down- to-earth (or, at least, nonoccult) thriller that veers from Vietnam to the Illinois town of Millhaven (Straub's counterpoint to friend Stephen King's Castle Rock) and that will probably have the author's fans lining up at the cash registers. (Book-of-the-Month Dual Selection for Spring)