CLIFF HANGER

When ex-Boston cop and current Martha's Vineyard fisherman Jeff ``J.W.'' Jackson (The Double-Minded Men, etc.) beats up Lloyd Cramer after Lloyd beat up his girlfriend Geraldine, everyone, including J.W., thinks it's Lloyd who makes three attempts on his life—until J.W. realizes someone is mistaking him for Weststock College professor John Skye and wants him dead for allegedly leading on and then abandoning student Bernie Orwell, causing her to commit suicide. Skye, forsaking the Vineyard for a summer in Colorado with his family, needs to be warned. So J.W., at loose ends since his girlfriend Zee is attending some conferences for August, heads for the Rockies—with a homicidal pursuer on his trail. A mountain skirmish ends in a fatal misstep, and J.W. returns to the Vineyard just in time for a final showdown between Geraldine and Lloyd. Craig's writing improves the farther off-island he ventures, but no matter how lyrical his descriptions of the Rockies and how self-deprecatingly manly his hero, it still can't offset a thin plot—and far too many fish recipes.