THE GOSPEL MAKERS

A new case for Detective Chief Inspector David Webb, of the Shillingham police (Three, Three, the Rivals, p. 108), starts with a major problem—who is the man found dead in a room at the Kings Arms Hotel, leaving not a shred of identification, and who were the two people glimpsed with him in the hotel bar? The man's identity, eventually uncovered by painstaking police work, grows even more important when it's determined that a lethal injection was the cause of death. The victim, revealed to be one Philip Kershaw, had come from France to settle the estate of his recently deceased, long-estranged mother. That estate, it turns out, had been left to the Church of the Final Revelation, not long ago established in a house in Shillingham and being quietly investigated by Inspector Nina Petrie, who finds herself fighting off its seductive message- -as well as an attraction to Daniel, one of its acolytes. The Revelationists are also intruding into the life of Webb's girlfriend Hannah James, deputy headmistress at a private girl's school, where timid English teacher Mattie Hendrix has kept secret her connection to the Church and where two students have been clandestinely attending Church meetings. The ecstatically awaited visit of the Church's American leader pulls together all these facets and more, bringing the case to a tension-loaded finale. Suspense and a feeling of menace build steadily, enhanced by real-life characters and a lively, straight-ahead writing style: a winner on all counts in the British traditional stakes, and Fraser's best to date.