A FLUSH OF SHADOWS

Five substantial stories, two of them new, posing a suitably varied bill of fare for Wilhelm's indefatigable husband-and-wife sleuths, retired policeman Charlie Meiklejohn and psychologist Constance Leidl (Seven Kinds of Death, 1992, etc.). The three reprinted pieces (1981-85) all feature unsettlingly dominant personalities reminiscent of Wilhelm's science fiction: a sinister medium in ``Sister Angel''; a Mexican shaman in ``The Gorgon Field''; and a disturbingly literal angel of death in ``With Thimbles, with Forks, and Hope.'' The two new tales, though more conventional``Torch Song'' presents an anonymous arsonist who warns Charlie, ``You will feel my pain''; while ``All for One'' asks which member of the Andreson family circle killed the father they claimed was trying to kill themshow veteran Wilhelm's plotting at its most vigorous. Even though most of her many novels are outside the mystery field, the taste for fantasy Wilhelm reveals here unleashes the archaic, primitive power the detective story had before it settled into the soothing rhythms of the whodunit.