DUST DEVILS OF THE PURPLE SAGE

``And he'd been such a nice kid,'' Jolie Wyatt reflects repeatedly after Tim Michelik is fished out of Sage Lake with three .25 slugs in him—slugs presumably put there by escaped convict James Elliott Jorgenson, who, though even younger than Tim, is nobody's idea of a nice kid. In fact, as Texas radio newscaster Jolie's research for a profile of Tim will soon establish, Tim was not so nice either. Just ask Ashley Draper, or Paige Beaman, or any of the other girls he promised to marry and then unceremoniously dumped. Aided and sometimes outrun by her eager, grieving son, Jeremy, who really is nice, Jolie will put the sorry pieces of Tim's life together—but not in time to avoid the tornado portended by the book's title, a tense standoff in a cursed cave on the property that Jolie and once-and-future husband Matt have just bought. After it, there's a final satisfying surprise. Jolie's relaxed humor, combined with more dangers and depths than her debut (Writers of the Purple Sage, 1994), gives this sequel a greater emotional range, though the killer will flash by too speedily for all but the most alert readers.