MURDER IN THE RED ROOM

Another of the author's posthumous novels featuring Eleanor Roosevelt, super-sleuth (Murder in the Blue Room, etc.). The murder this time is in the White House's Red Room. The corpse found there, stabbed to death, is identified as one Shondor Jack, a violence- prone pimp from Cleveland. Police Lieutenant Kennelly and Secret Service man Stan Szezygiel turn up a few suspects, most of them with Cleveland connections—Margaret Dempsey and Cristian Asman, both Harvard lawyers working in the White House; a trio of stripper-prostitutes; girl-about-town Joan Fisher; her Senator father and her onetime fiancÇ Representative Vernon Metcalf. A second murder and a closer look at some hidden relationships clear the way for an all-suspects showdown where Eleanor does her stuff. A serviceable but rather contrived plot takes second place to the intimate, behind-the-scenes details of F.D.R.'s second term and the evocation of the powerful and famous of the era. Sporadically entertaining.