NEXT OF KIN

Ex-Senator Stuart Channing, up for a Cabinet post, is found shot to death in his locked study--his papers shredded. And, while family secrets and the murder motive emerge slowly, family and friends gather: Stuart's rich, pretty, extravagant widow Lettie; his brother Chan; Lettie's longtime friend, rich Mady Smith, who's in love with Chan but lives with her determinedly charming stepfather Clarence (a widower courting a very rich woman); Stuart's devoted but elusive secretary Nadine; plus Lettie's mysterious Australian kinfolk--Uncle Ernest (supposedly dead) and Lettie's mum (now super-richly remarried). Finally, then, Nadine comes across with a revelation, and Lettie's secrets emerge. But the germ of an interesting plot here is smothered in trivia, banal chitchat, and stick-figure characterizations, making this strictly for old-time Eberhart loyalists.