PRESENCE OF MIND

Only six people were in the audience for the Pennington Players' final performance of Love's Labour's Lost, but it's six too many for whoever has started to kill them off. Emily Charters, the Marplesque spinster who's emerging as the sole survivor, teams up with Chicago police detective Jeremy Ransom, who just happens to be reading the right Dickens novel to point him toward the single slender clue that will finger the guilty Player (the Hollywood-bound founder? the hard- bitten ingÇnue? the dowdy gofer?)—after the obligatory trap baited with Emily. The Players' world—which playwright/first-novelist Hunter presumably knows well—has a seedy charm, though the police work seems thin and jarringly British despite the Chicago locale. Maybe Jeremy and Emily's promised next outing will be better balanced: after all, you can't kill the whole house in every book.