SOME PREDATORS ARE MALE

Another tidy, intriguing story involving London's overweight, clear-thinking private eye John Samson and his super-secretary Shandy (Cruel Victim). Minor TV executive Neil Pensom hires Samson to find out how and what are behind a series of disorienting events that have befallen him in recent weeks: an aggressive woman named Amanda has kept turning up at home and abroad claiming to be his wife; he was captured in Holland by a team of kidnappers, dumped in an obscure German town, and later found, on a thankful return to his London apartment, that his key no longer fit, his belongings were no longer there, and a brassy Felicity Flowerdew was in comfortable residence. There are a few blips in Pensom's seemingly blameless past, but these lead Samson nowhere. The denouement, when he figures it out, is a letdown but a rather beguiling one. All in all, Tripp continues to provide crisply clever, fast-moving entertainments.