SHATTERED RHYTHMS

After tracing missing jazz guitarist AndrÇ Ledoux to his Aunt Eulalie's at the request of his bassist Ernie West, Portland p.i. Lil Ritchie goes looking for him again on her own hook, this time finding him and his band in Montreal. AndrÇ is vague about why he keeps cutting out, but he lets Lil hang on, disguised as a reporter, through the Montreal Jazz Festival (``the next few days,'' Lil says, not for the first time, ``were something out of an old dream for me''), where ``the greatest triumph of his life'' is spoiled by his murder. Even more shocking, somebody's attacked Aunt Eulalie, who only has time to accuse ``the demon on the TV'' before she dies too. Luckily, Lil, who's an engagingly low-profile lesbian heroine but not much of a detective, recognizes a phone number on a telltale matchbook—and that's all, folks. So dominated by Lil's affection and grief for AndrÇ (she confronts the killer with the annihilating accusation, ``You killed pure and sweet music, and no one—no one—has that right'') that it's less a mystery than a three-day wake.