HOUR OF THE MANATEE

Socialite Henry Hartley III's former domestic Maureen Fitzgerald, who's been certified for 25 years, barely has time to tell Gulf Coast photographer/p.i. Tony Lowell, another refugee from the Sixties, that Hartley's drowning death was no accident before she becomes a murder victim herself. It looks as if Tony's soft-shoe detective style is no match for the heavy hitters that Maureen's cryptic tale has implicated—Hartley's young widow Julie, his ravaged mother Lucretia (who went broke paying out a slander settlement after she accused Julie of murder), and Judge Michael Folner (who defended the suit, claimed fabulously rich Julie for his reward, and has been dropping money into enough pockets in the meantime to put himself in line for the Supreme Court). How can Tony and his unwilling partner, Sgt. Lena Bedrosian, elude the local cops, the bulldog FBI agents on their trail, and the long arm of Folner's law long enough to bring the still-active killer to book? More chase than investigation, really, though Tony's debut is marked by a certain lazy mental competence to match the physical stamina he's going to need.