THE BERYLLIUM MURDER

Another offbeat adventure for Dr. Gloria Lamerino (The Lithium Murder, 1999, etc.), a physicist now retired to her

hometown of Revere, Massachusetts, after a 25-year stint in California, mostly at the Berkeley physics lab where Gary Larkin headed a team studying substances like beryllium. Knowing Gary’s near-fanatical caution in the lab, Gloria is shocked to hear of his death, supposedly from carelessness with the material. With encouragement from boyfriend Matt Gennaro, of the Revere PD, Gloria flies to Berkeley to stay with her old friend Elaine Cody. Elaine has troubles of her own: Manuel, teenaged son of her friend Jos‚ Martinez, disappeared, then was found days later in an abandoned battery pit just outside the laboratory fence. Gloria discovers a series of motives for Manuel’s killing when she learns that he was hacking into the research group’s computers and practicing blackmail with his findings. A couple of scary incidents have Gloria feeling threatened and vulnerable, and she’s happy when Matt turns up—though it’s only to find that she must handle her own escape from a surprising killer. An overworked plot and uncharismatic heroine make this outing less than a must, but enough twists are properly in place

to hold most readers to the end.