EVE'S MEN

A straight-arrow Chicago realtor falls victim to his brother's revenge scenarios--and his own response to his brother's lover--in this swift-moving, lightweight fantasy. Charley Poole is called out to Colorado Springs by Eve Sherman, his brother Brian's live-in. Brian can't come to the phone because he's in a holding cell after bulldozing the sets for Damian Jolly's production of Miss Colorado, the movie Brian felt sure was going to tarnish the memory of his relationship with late country-singing star Kim Sanders, a Miss Colorado runner-up who overdosed, with or without Brian's help, four years ago. Kissing his disapproving wife goodbye, Charley rushes out to Colorado Springs with a suitcase full of bail money, and then watches Brian spiral madly out of control, walking away from a restitution deal with the ill-named Jolly, and falling into bed with an Aspen snow bunny whose brother, pint-sized Oklahoma cowboy Chester Einhorn, has Brian-sized ideas about avenging his sister's dishonor--and an outsized weapon to back them up. Meanwhile, Eve, stung by Brian's flagrant seduction of one warm body after another, is disturbing Charley's series of phone calls home by snuggling ever closer to him. Will Charley be true to his slow-burning wife back in Chicago? And will he and Eve be able to rescue each other from the conflagration Brian seems to be planning for his own life? Thornburg (A Man's Game, 1996, etc.) keeps you guessing whether good-hearted Charley and Eve will have the happy ending you'd like or the catastrophe that closeness to Brian seems to guarantee. Apart from keeping the story moving, though, Thornburg doesn't seem to have much in mind; when Brian's house of cards comes clattering down, you may feel a little bewildered that you cared about his innocent accomplices.