DARK STAR

Another chapter in the life of wealthy-widow-sometime-sleuth Joanna Stark, a presently inactive partner in Securities Systems International and mother of E.J., whose con-man father, Anthony Parducci, seems to have risen from the dead. Joanna is backing E.J. in a winery venture near their Sonoma home, employing Joe Donatello, grandson of the venerable Donatello vineyard family, as wine-maker. Meanwhile, she's obsessed by fear of long-ago lover Parducci, supposedly drowned in Europe, a fear reinforced by unmistakable signs of his presence in her house. Parducci's forte, it seems, was art theft. Joanna is convinced that the upcoming auction in San Francisco of a van Gogh owned by shipping-tycoon Jerry Eckridge--combined with Parducci's desire for revenge--has brought her nemesis back to the US. A frenzy of activity ensues as she chases clown rumors and renews old contacts in the art world--most importantly, Adam Hawthorne of Renfrow's Auctioneers. Their efforts succeed in aborting the theft, but a larger problem emerges when Parducci's body is discovered in Joanna's modest San Francisco pied-…-terre and E.J., known to have been there, disappears. Another victim surfaces before Joanna, backtracking local history, gets to the root of it all and nails the culprit. Rambling, wordy, overplotted, and undermotivated, with frenetic but aimless to-and-froing and much hand-wringing rumination. Unfortunately, Muller's latest inspires unfavorable comparisons to her less boring heroine, Sharon McCone. Hard-working but dull.