THREATS AND MENACES

Over howls of protest that their Major Investigation Pool is being assigned to something so minor, Superintendent George Macrae and his partner, Leo Silver, are pressed into investigating a series of burglaries in London's posh Selbourne Place. Despite the travails of his own long-running domestic soap opera—his second wife turns up on his doorstep and parks their kids with him and his tart, Frenchy—Macrae's ship is about to come in: He finds the body of a Middle East arms merchant ripening in his apartment. Where is Mr. Sadeq's Filipina maid, Alice Mendoza, who's wanted for questioning? She's been secretly taken in by precocious Dory Mavroulian, a seven-year-old savior armed with a pair of binoculars, a hidey-hole in her roof garden, and a formidable imagination that veers from private fantasizing (Alice becomes Alisha, the Princess full of Eastern Promise) to lying to the police (for whom she helpfully identifies dislikable gardener Ralph Eames as the man she saw fighting with Mr. Sadeq just before the Princess ran out). As the title suggests: too lightweight, even miscellaneous, to stand out in this fine series (Never Die in January, 1993, etc.). But Scholefield's salt-and-pepper detective pair continues to provide a solid alternative to Reginald Hill's Dalziel and Pascoe.