PURSUED BY SHADOWS

Murky financial deals and a killing in London provide a dramatic start to a new puzzle for Toronto's Homicide Inspector John Sanders and unofficial aide-photographer girlfriend Harriet Jeffries (Murder in a Good Cause, etc.). Art-restorer Malcolm Whiteside has been stabbed to death over an unidentified object of great value, now in the possession of Jane Sinclair, once an assistant to Harriet. Jane has run from her volatile artist husband (and Harriet's ex-lover) Guy Beaumont, leaving him in London while she flies home to Toronto, certain she's being followed. After sending an SOS to Harriet, Jane hides out in an upstate New York village under the wing of sturdy local carpenter Amos Cavanaugh--the precious package now in the care of her mentally fragile sister Lesley. Others are interested in that package--sleek Nina Smithson, owner of the gallery that shows Beaumont's work; his friend Peter Bellingham; and assorted art-world wheelers and dealers. Matters reach a climax with Beaumont's death--in Harriet's apartment--and the surfacing of the London connection. The story's powerful sense of menace is too soon overcome by frantic comings and goings, romantic complications, and plotlines that turn chaotic. Well written, spottily absorbing, but too contrived and unconvincing to match the author's previous outings.