A BODY IN BELMONT HARBOR

Convinced that the killing of hoodlum wannabe Harry Palm on Chicago's waterfront is somehow connected to her husband's apparent suicide in the harbor two years earlier, wealthy, brittle Janice Fairs hires self-doubting ex-cop Paul Whelan (Death in Uptown, 1990) to take another look at the financial fortunes of High Pair, the software company that Phil Fairs had run together with slick Rich Vosic—whom Janice accuses of her husband's murder—until embezzling accountant George Brister took off, leaving the partners holding the bag. En route to a neat solution, Whelan finds time to protect a hooker from a conventioneering pharmacist, break up a cross-burning on his neighbor's lawn, mix it up in a bar brawl with his loose-cannon police buddy Al Bauman, make cautious time with a smiling waitress, and get under Vosic's skin but good. A shaggy, satisfying valentine to Chicago's seedy uptown.