EVIL INTENTIONS

When negative energy leads to homicide and other kinds of discord, can Feng Sui restore harmony?

Feng Shui is the art of placing the things you own in harmonious juxtaposition. “Do it right, and you benefit across the board from lively, healthy energy,” says Salome Waterhouse, a professional Feng Shui practitioner who plies her trade in and around Washington, D.C. She’s also, as the need arises, an amateur sleuth. When attractive young Honey Lee is found dangling from a metal rod, it’s Salome’s cue to don the deerstalker. Alive, Honey earned her living as an “organizer” whom moneyed Georgetown matrons might hire to attack disarray, closet by closet, room by room, foible by foible. Who would want such a helpful person dead? Her interest sparked by the dire fate of someone whose life, like hers, was a continual war on messes, Salome soon has a more compelling reason to investigate the organizer’s murder. It seems that Honey was an illegal alien who paid a snakehead, a white slaver, to arrange her passage from China. This particular snakehead is the infamous Duncan Mah, whose chilling history with Salome makes him her nemesis, or vice versa.

Salome, a combination guru and New Age pragmatist, charms, but Osborne (Cut to: Murder, 1995, etc.) adds a clutter of subplots that could have used some Feng Shui.