AN EYE FOR MURDER

Documentary filmmaker Ellie Foreman receives a life-altering letter from a woman she doesn't know about the death of a man she doesn't know. Her name was found handwritten among the possessions of Ben Sinclair: Was she a friend or relative? asks Mrs. Fleishman, the dead man's landlady. Ever-curious Ellie can't resist. Within hours she's closeted with Mrs. Fleishman, poring over the late Mr. Sinclair's effects, fully launched on a gallop into history. And a dark ride it proves to be, replete with Nazis foreign and homegrown, plus those predictable links to the present. Turns out, for instance, that Ben Sinclair was also Ben Skulnick and under that name a friend of Ellie's father Jake. Further to the point, both Ben and Jake had ties to an American secret agent murdered as the result of clandestine activities during WWII. Does any of this bear on the film Ellie is making for Marian Iverson, Republican candidate from Illinois for the US Senate? You bet it does. Exactly how, though, is buried so deep in secret agendas that Ellie keeps guessing wrong—a lot. Then, too, there's the heartthrob factor, the sudden emergence of David Linden (complete with “sculpted biceps” and “cornflower eyes”) as a pivotal figure. But Ellie's the true stuff of working-mom sleuths. Blow smoke at her, threaten her, knock her silly: she'll still crack her case and get her man.

Mid-pack in the working-mom tradition: the brio's there, but the substance isn't.