DEATH IN DONEGAL BAY

Veteran juvenile-sports-book writer Gault offers a dreary Southern California outing for sleuth Brock Callahan--an ex-football pro who's independently wealthy, working as a shamus only when bored to distraction with golf, naps, and waiting for decorator wife Jan to come home. In fact, right now he's just keeping a protective eye on his young protÉgÉ Corey Raleigh, who's been hired by onetime conman Alan Baker to watch his gorgeous wife Felicia. But then there's a murder connected to Baker's ex-wife Joan Allingham, who lives with her powerful, fascistic father in a Hearst-style castle: the victim is the father of Joan's maid, a part-time police informer. So Brock gets interested--and soon finds himself in the middle of a mess involving big-shot lawyers, rival private-eyes, drugs, blackmail, and more. Pointless, confused, dull.