MURDER AMONG THE ANGELS

Aging actress Charlotte Graham's desultory quest for plastic surgery takes her to the Hudson Valley hamlet of Zion Hill, where Dr. Victor Louria works his cosmetic wizardry. But Dr. Louria isn't Zion Hill's only claim to fame: 95% of the town's 3,000 souls are Swedenborgians who believe they can commune with their beloved dead. And now they have some new correspondents: young women who have been killed and dismembered shortly after courses of plastic surgery that made them look, according to the forensic sculptor who studies their skulls, just like Dr. Louria's adored late wife Lily, who accidentally drowned several years ago. It's obvious to Charlotte and her cohort Jerry D`Angelo, the retired New York Homicide cop who's now chief of police in Zion Hill, that Dr. Louria is involved somehow in the murders. But why would he have killed the women whose faces he'd painstakingly reconstructed to resemble his dead wife's? And if the killer wasn't Louria, which of Zion Hill's heavenly-minded citizens has been communing a little too directly with the other side? Charlotte's second hardcover appearance (Murder on High, 1994) is sparked by an unusual background—and an irresistible hook- -before it eventually settles into a comfortable groove.