THE ODD JOB

An over-the-top adventure for Boston's Sarah (nÇe Kelling) Bittersohn. Her husband, Max—partner in their art-recovery- oriented detective agency (The Resurrection Man, 1992, etc.)—is in Argentina, chasing down a pair of Watteaus stolen from the Wilkens Museum. Established in Boston by the late Eugenia Wilkens, the museum has had its problems, with more looming in the shape of Elwyn Fleeson Turbot—a rich, wannabe gentleman farmer, with a gold-encrusted wife, a pair of delinquent twins, and a hectoring air, who's been named head of the museum's doddering Board of Trustees. Turbot's appointment is almost immediately followed by the murder of Dolores Agnew Tawne, a dedicated museum administrator and gifted copyist, found stabbed to death with an antique hat-pin. Sarah, unknowingly named executor of Dolores's estate, finds strange things happening—as well as a strange photograph of a group of masked women in costume. Having got son Davy safely stowed with in-laws, then, she bustles to and fro in search of answers that finally arrive, melodramatically, during a run-in with a bellowing Turbot. Snail-paced and wordy much of the way; beyond bizarre for the rest. This one's strictly for the author's enthusiastic she-can-do- no-wrong devotees.