PAID IN FULL

After a seven-year hiatus (Brothers in Blood, 1993), Brod resurrects her romance-impaired Illinois p.i. Quint McCauley and sends him "looking for the married boyfriend of the woman who was divorcing the guy who was living with [his] ex-girlfriend." Not only is stock-market maven Kurt Wicklow missing, but he's emptied out his clients' bank accounts and left a large, unsightly bloodstain on the carpet. Is he faking his own death to live in comfort elsewhere on his pilfered assets? His artist wife has no answer, and his supposed gal-pal Ellie Carver is soon found dead with a suitcase stuffed with money nearby. Oddly, the cash exactly equals the total monthly withdrawals from Wicklow's bank. Was Ellie not his lover but his blackmailer? When Ellie's husband Ed, a former police chief, becomes the prime suspect in her death because she was stalling on their divorce, Elaine Kluszewski, pregnant by Ed, asks her past love Quint to prove him innocent. A newspaper clipping and the torched corpse of a bounty hunter lead Quint back 20 years to a quartet of college boys and a rape that turned deadly and, eventually, to a vengeful bartender with arson in mind. But it will a take a kidnapping, more death, and some convoluted reasoning to pinpoint who belongs to which misdeed, and why.

Quint's and Elaine's relationship has all the drama, pathos, and allure of a country-western song, but they need a less congested plot to mosey around in.