COUNTRY COMES TO TOWN

by Toni L.P. Kelner ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1996

A fourth outing for Laura Fleming (Trouble Looking for a Place to Happen, 1995, etc.): MIT graduate and computer programmer, spouse to a compulsive Shakespeare quoter (currently and mercifully abroad), and sometime amateur sleuth. Laura is also the gift given by Byerly, North Carolina, to the Boston area, a sentimental southerner with a superficial coating of city smarts and a wealth of eccentric relatives always ringing her up. In this latest adventure, which has to do with the death of an old college boyfriend in her parking lot, Laura is joined by hick cousin Thaddeus--you'll want to call him Jethro--who does some legwork and has a wearingly irrelevant romance with a predatory secretary. The ex-boyfriend, Philip Dennis, was disliked by all members of his own computer company, so Laura goes undercover, changes jobs, and chats up a passel of old MIT buddies to find the culprit. On her way to disclosure, she dishes enough dirt on the victim (adultery, blackmail, corporate high-jinks) to make you wonder how she could have dated the creep. But then, despite some neat computer stuff and a few ingenious conversations on the morality of meddling, Laura herself and her cronies don't seem quite grown-up enough to interest seasoned crime buffs. Obvious jokes and excruciating attention paid to such matters as telephoning for pizza slow this leisurely enterprise to a plod.

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1996

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Kensington

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996

Categories: FICTION