TRADE SECRETS

Boston p.i., Nason Nichols, one jump ahead of a bulldog divorce lawyer's alimony demands, thinks his newest case—recovering the computer-chip technology that Dr. Bruce Platt took when he jumped ship from Zoltec Industries—will be routine. Nase doesn't know that Dr. Armand Zoller, grand old man of Zoltec, will order him to go behind the company's back by pinching Platt's documents, getting Platt's old flame Dr. Rachel Ornstein to cook the figures, and returning them- -preparing for a stunning turnaround of the company's stock. Or that when he goes to warn Platt that the bogus figures he's planning to turn in to his Japanese masters could cost his life, he'll find Platt dead and himself falling for Rachel and into a police blotter. Or that the theft is just the latest link in a daisy chain of securities fraud.... A lightly entertaining mystery-caper, though it's not clear from the ending if newcomer Nase plans a return to the Boston jurisdiction.