THE POISON POOL

Arresting retarded young Joey Macready for the fatal beating of old Tom Carter looks like a fast way to close the case, but it's just the beginning of Inspector Alex Sinclair's problems. Even before Joey hangs himself in his cell, other tenants in his housing project—whipped on by social worker Derek Stevenson—are out for Sinclair's blood. And when, shunning Superintendent Eddie Greaves's offer of sponsorship to a fast-track Masonic lodge and doubting Joey's guilt, he follows up new information about Tom's concern about the dangerous pollution levels intermittently killing the fish downstream from Highcliffe Beck, he's framed for bribery, summarily suspended, and sued for divorce (the inevitable murderous assaults on him and Stevenson's sympathetic underling Kate Weston are right around the corner). Sinclair toils manfully against an impossible deadline to link a 40-year-old crime to that all-too-clubby lodge—in a workmanline debut.