DEAD IN THE WATER

A pair of crowded, noisy scenes at Mildred's, a Massachusetts North Shore hangout, frame this shaggy, offspeed mystery; and by the fade-out, you'll have grown to love all hands present—especially Ozzie Barrett, a lackadaisical trawler who turns detective to clear his lovable, erratic Uncle Barry (whom Ozzie has just sprung from the loony bin where his two spinster aunts had committed him so that one of them could get married without his carryings-on) from a charge of killing well-to-do local widow Veronica Hammond. By the close, Ozzie and friends—raffish professorial buddy Wilson Malone, come-hither Marine mechanic Ruby Willey, and her eccentric dad Rocket—have foiled the police, smarmy banker Richie DeSilva, and Ozzie's soon-to-be-ex to reveal a much more plausible killer. Nothing original—or even very mysterious—happens, but Chaput (The Man on the Train, 1986) puts a fresh and welcome spin on every incident and every screwy type.