A SECOND SHOT IN THE DARK
By
Business as usual for Tipping Herald reporter Chris Martin (A Real Shot in the Arm, 1990): minutes after she gets an anonymous note offering to expose a prominent businessman's ""wrongdoings,"" the informant, Rosemary Tindall, is found dead--the latest victim, it seems, of a serial killer--and the morning after Chris meets her new lover Pete Schiavo's ex-wife's second husband, John Redfern, he's arrested for the murder. Though the police turn John loose, they don't accept Chris's evidence that the crime took place a full day earlier--so, besieged by her persistent, loathsome ex and her hectoring editor, she sets off on her own to tie Rosemary's death to that businessman's round of sex parties. Roome juggles suspects, clues, and domestic subplots with such dexterity, keeping the pot constantly aboil, that you hardly notice that her likable heroine is as naggingly intuitive and independent as her sisters in Mary Roberts Rinehart.