ICEWATER MANSIONS

Just because Mitch Mitchell is her late father's daughter doesn't mean she's not just as tough as the old man. Back in northern Michigan to run Shannon Mitchell's bar and wind up his affairs, she doesn't believe for a minute that his death (drinking, car crash, hypothermia) was a simple accident, and her aggressive poking around soon turns up a hopeful mistress, an illegal salvage deal with some shady customers, and an underhanded plan to forge Mitch's signature to the documents that would give Alec Deveraux—the well-heeled old buddy who raped Mitch just before she left for points south—visitation rights to her son, Corey, in return for cash payments to Guess Who. (Hey, nobody said old Shan was a saint.) Following the trail of the salvage op will take Mitch two hundred feet beneath the surface of icy Lake Huron; confronting the hydra-headed Deveraux family will take her into some even chillier waters—in the company only of a cross-wolf named Dog and a bunch of even more rapacious human scavengers. Allyn (Motown Underground, 1993, etc.) presents enough fast- paced felonies to send most of the cast up for life, and, boy, do they deserve it.