BLOOD KIN

Days after happily adopted Kate Lundgren browbeats her foster parents into helping her find Teresa Cruzan, her birth mother (whose identity they've hidden from her through four years of feigned searching)—and after Kate has thrust herself into unwilling Terry's life—she discovers Terry's strangled body and sets out, with the help of chastely romantic Jack Kramer, to find her father and uncover the motive for Terry's murder. The small-town Minnesota atmosphere, well- meaning and provincial, is particularly good—``Woodward is proof,'' as Jack says, ``that hell is full and the dead walk the earth''—and so is the facility that Dorner (Family Closets, Freeze Frame) shows in juggling candidates for Kate's paternity (Terry's lowlife companion Bruce Maxwell, self-righteous businessman Thomas Werner, even—gasp!- -Kate's adoptive father Doug). Too many nocturnal stalkings and near-fatal attacks for all but the most devoted Mary Higgins Clarkies—but the final unmasking is well worth the wait.