AN ARTISTIC WAY TO GO

It's not very surprising that art dealer Oliver Cooper disappears from his home on Mallorca shortly after mob-connected enforcer Ernest White turns up to demand $1,350,000 for two paintings that White's employer, who purchased them from Cooper, says are forgeries. What's surprising is that (1) Cooper soon turns up dead, and (2) so many of his associates, from a neighboring farmer who's been stealing his water supply to his beautiful, avaricious wife Rachael to Rachael's sturdy lover, wanted him dead. It's up to imperturbable Inspector Enrique Alvarez to smash the killer's broken-watch alibi before his short-fused superior blows a gasket. There's not much to Jeffries's 20th (An Arcadian Death, 1996, etc.) but Alvarez as a Mediterranean Columbo. And the corpse's stopped watch really ought to be retired, perhaps to sunny Mallorca.