A HOUSE BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD

Fleeing an unsuitable relationship back in Chicago, where her noncommittal boyfriend seemed to be fleeing her, freelance writer Meg Kessigner is happy to have a refuge: her late great-aunt Hannah Ehrlich’s house in sheltered Harrison, PA. Despite the attractiveness of the old-fashioned kitchen and the warmth of her neighbor Christine Ruschman and Christine’s 12-year-old daughter Jane, Meg would be a lot less sanguine about swapping Chicago for bucolic Harrison if she knew that Angie Morrison, the no-account tenant who’d been living in the house ever since Hannah died, didn’t renew her lease because she was murdered, and there’s an excellent chance that Hannah was helped to her grave too. Instead of worrying about the mortality rate at her address, Meg concentrates at first on refinishing the kitchen floor, coaching Little League baseball, training a stray dog she’s taken in, and conducting dalliances with two eligible bachelors—carpenter/painter Jack Deutsch, and Michael Mulcahy, Hannah’s nephew and executor—one of whom is obviously the killer (for how else could Meg decide which one to stay with?). It’s a tribute to Gleiter (Lie Down with Dogs, 1996) that she not only keeps you guessing about both men but keeps you absorbed in Meg’s domestic rituals as she’s slowly immersing her in the mystery. An appealingly low-key idyll, even if the menace, like Meg, takes its time settling in.