THE LESSON OF HER DEATH

As Lt. Bill Corde—still haunted by the tragic mistake that drove him off the St. Louis police force to quiet New Lebanon, Missouri- -hunts for the killer of Auden University coed Jennie Gebben, the murder is already beginning to tear his own family apart. His high- school son Jamie—who's narrowly survived the result of someone having tampering with his bicycle—knows much too much about the murder, and the killer has secretly befriended Corde's learning-impaired daughter Sarah by leaving her notes encouraging her to run away and by sending unsettling photographs of her to her father. Besides the full-dress investigation of the Auden case, then—replete with the standard professorial lusts for sex and power—Deaver plays expertly, and at shameless length, on Jamie's fatal secret and Sarah's precarious progress, as a helpful visiting tutor tussles with her secret friend the Sunshine Man for her life. Deaver (Mistress of Justice, etc.) combines academic malfeasance, small-town police department politics, and family melodrama with all the requisite mystery and suspense for a double dose of pleasure.