FILE UNDER: ARSON

Leah Hunter's friend Charlie Fagan is convinced that his nephew Billy, who had counseling for pyromania as a boy, is the arsonist behind a rash of fires. So are the Yorkshire police, especially after Billy's hanged in his cell and they can close the books on eight cases of arson. But when Leah, looking more closely into the recent blaze at Fast-Sell Carpets, provokes Fast-Sell owner Mark Drury into filing a phony complaint that gets her suspended from her Inland Revenue job, she's sure she's onto something nastier than one troubled kid—particularly when the cellmate Billy confided in, the jailer the cellmate tried to blackmail, and finally Drury himself follow Billy down that last mile. Armed only with her trademark truculence, which spares herself no more than her antagonists, Leah works overtime (well, without pay) to uncover a new variation on one of the oldest scams in the insurance game—and save another street kid from Billy's fate. Leah's patter is more than a shade sententious and depressive in this third case (File Under: Missing, 1994, etc.), and her detective work consists mainly of keeping count of corpses and trying to avoid becoming one herself. Below average for this mouthy series.