THE GLASS-SIDED ANTS' NEST

Despite the constants of corpse, killer, stalker, and author deception, this first mystery novelist has something both new and different. He's Inspector James Pibble, the uptight young man Scotland Yard reserves for just such esoteric homicides as this one. The victim is a Ku, chieftain of a nearly extinct New Guinea tribe transplanted to London but still living by tribal laws on the largesse and under the scholarly eye of a distinguished lady anthropologist. Readers are given all the same clues Pibble gets but the likably less than perfect Inspector does wonders with them.