EVERYTHING YOU HAVE IS MINE

Scoppettone, best known for her YA fiction (The Late Great Me) and her lurid melodramas for grown-ups (Innocent Bystanders), introduces lesbian p.i. Lauren Laurano, who prowls among New York's homeless and AIDS-stricken, never failing to notice how everybody's dressed, as she hunts down the rapist and murderer of young Lake Huron at the urging of Lake's half-sister Ursula, who's obviously holding out some important information of her own. The case seems complicated enough when Lauren realizes that the rapist and killer are two different people, and when Lauren's super, Gordon Peace, becomes a second victim (you won't believe the connection); but the twisted, layer-upon-layer secrets that Lake's family cherishes (neither Ursula nor Lake's half-brother Mark nor her parents Whitey and Helena are quite what they seem) are more baffling than the Rosetta Stone. Lauren's carefully correct political sensibility may get on your nerves, but Scoppettone borrows from only the best—Grafton, Paretsky, Ross Macdonald, Chinatown—and despite its intricacies and thefts, this mostly purrs along, like a car built entirely of spare parts.