AGAINST THE LAW

Hawaii governor Jim Slaton thinks he can appeal to both sovereignty activists and the big-ticket developers who've always buttered his bread. But when somebody who's unimpressed kills the governor and his today-only escort in his hotel, Prosecuting Attorney Brian Reed, one of the governor's most uncritical supporters, is sure the culprit is one of those activists: Peter Maikai, the rancher who threatened Slaton less than an hour before his bodyguards found his gutted corpse. Despite all the evidence, though, Reed's chief deputy prosecutor, Dan Carrier, can't believe that Maikaithe man who brought him up until Dan got Maikai's daughter, Lily, pregnantis guilty. Then a strenuous day in court stops Maikai's heart dead, leaving behind Lily, bound by her father's dying request to hold onto the family ranch; her brother Michael, who's can't wait to unload the ranch for a quick bundle; and, just maybe, Lily's babythe one she had told Dan she'd aborted 17 years ago. Dan's mission: to find his now-grown daughter and the will that cuts her in for a share of the ranch, and to vindicate Maikai by linking Slaton's death with the fatal accidents that claimed Dan's own brother's family. Whew. Eberhardt (Body of a Crime, 1994) spins a series of coverups that spiral outward so wholeheartedlyeveryone's got something on everyone elsethat you're left with a pleasantly dizzy sense of paranoia yourself, as if the Hawaiian government had bugged your friendship lei. (Literary Guild selection)