HEART TROUBLE

Everybody in Atlanta hates Whitney Albright Dobbs, the well- connected society matron who downed a brace of Tanquerays at her club, ran down eight-year-old Faneeta Mayes, and then got off with a fine and a hundred hours of community service (the highway trash patrol) thanks to a bleeding-heart lawyer who blamed everybody except his client. But even Whitney Dobbs deserves a fair shake now that she's not so well-connected anymore; her cardiologist husband Carson Dobbs, long separated from her and cloven to her replacement, has taken advantage of her legal troubles to squirrel away his assets and file for divorce. So when Whitney asks Callahan Garrity, p.i.-cum-house cleaner (Happy Never After, 1995, etc.), to go on a treasure hunt for her ex's family jewels, Callahan reluctantly takes the case. Her plan to insinuate her ailing but indomitable mother into Dr. Dobbs's practice as a patient and to mobilize her staff at The House Mouse to spy on the good doctor is just bearing its first fruits when Whitney and another member of the highway cleaning patrol are shotgunned and stuffed into the roadside trash. Was the killer the heart-specialist husband, one of Faneeta Mayes's distraught parents, or just one of the dozens of picketers who'd been calling for Whitney's blood up till the day of her death? Callahan's fifth is conscientiously plotted, if the waves upon waves of witnesses don't wear out your patience. (Regional author tour)