DEADLINE FOR MURDER

Don't be fooled: McDermid's third appearance in under a year (following The Mermaids Singing and Blue Genes) is actually the first American edition of a Lindsay Gordon novel published in the UK in 1991 as Final Edition. Her third case begins when Lindsay returns to Glasgow to find her blackmailing journalist colleague and ex-lover Alison Maxwell strangled, and Alison's ex-lover Jackie Mitchell starting a life sentence for the murder. Lindsay's old lover, Booker Prize prospect Cordelia Brown, has fled to the arms of Jackie's ex-lover, attorney Claire Oglivie, who hires Lindsay to clear Jackie's name--but who isn't a bit happy with the new suspect identified by the eyewitness Lindsay digs up. A midgrade whodunit peopled with lesbians (and one gay male MP) who've all slept with each other, or hope to do so soon. Only the prose is chaste.