SPARK

The estimable Fred Carver (Hot, etc.), the cop-turned-Florida- p.i. with a game leg and a savvy black girlfriend, agrees to look into old-timer Jerome Evans's unexpected heart-attack death for his widow Hattie, who's received anonymous notes telling her that the death was not from natural causes. And compared to nationwide insurance statistics, there do seem to be more deaths occurring in Solartown, a retirement community near Orlando, than there ought to be. A nurse with sadistic tendencies, a doctor with amorous ones, and a psychopathic ex-con with meaner hobbies than the Marquis de Sade—all come into play before Carver zeroes in on some pharmaceutical shenanigans. Below par Lutz, who, here, tosses in water torture, bloody fingernail removal, a beating with a rubber hose, sex, car chases, more sex, and (quite charming) sass from Hattie and (irritating) lip from his lover Beth, then wraps up this plot-by-rote with a preposterous confrontation scene with the villains. This is the unenviable result of what happens when a good writer has, for the moment, nothing to say, but keeps talking anyway.