WINTER RULES

The latest in the sprightly series (Laid Dead, 1991, etc.) about London's golfer-novelist-car-freak Inspector Angus Straun finds Angus being pressed into service by Special Branch. Augustus (``call me Gus'') Aligar, the golf-playing, American-educated new president of Chakra, in Africa, is informally visiting London and wants to play the course at the Rogues Club. Who better than Angus to be bodyguard-golf partner? He and literary-agent/girlfriend Laurie join Gus and his stunning mistress, Kiki Boucher, for a round that's cut short when someone takes a shot at them and it's discovered that Gus's hired Rolls is missing from the parking lot. With his own elegant Maserati recently stolen and crashed, Angus explores the netherworld of car theft and finds a tenuous connection to Chakra. Invited by Gus to visit that country and play the only—and still unfinished—course there, Angus becomes embroiled in much more serious mischief that involves Gus's survival and, peripherally, some shady doings very close to home. Angus's first-person narrative is chipper and entertaining, but too many threads makes knots in the flow of the plot and dissipate tension. Fun, but less than Cork's best.