KILLER WEEKEND

Sun Valley’s plucky sheriff must head off a hired killer and save the woman he rescued eight years ago.

Young patrolman Walt Fleming’s scrupulous attention to criminal detail once led him to save upwardly mobile attorney Elizabeth Shaler from a murderous intruder in her vacation home. That bit of heroism put Fleming in the sheriff’s seat from which, nearly a decade later, he must oversee the security of Ms. Shaler, now America’s Attorney General, as she prepares to announce her candidacy for president at one of those rich-guy conferences. Fleming is trying to figure out what happened to an assassin who should have been on a plane from Salt Lake, where the locals found a fresh corpse. We know early on that the hired killer was indeed on the plane and that he is Milav Trevalian, a fake blind guy whose guide dog died en route in the baggage compartment. Who would suspect a blind guy, right? Trevalian has usurped the identity of the guy he murdered back in Utah, and he has an elaborate and fairly high-tech plan to make it past the layers of private security and secret-service agents surrounding the Attorney General. Poor Fleming has to work cheek by jowl with the deputy who’s been cuckolding him and who may have his eye on that sheriff’s star. But he keeps his mind on the job. There’s plenty to keep him busy, with two murders in 24 hours and some concurrent cruelty to animals.

Hyperactive and fairly tense fare from Pearson (Cut and Run, 2005, etc.).