Caught in the Shadows

A messy divorce in the affluent suburbs of Chicago's North Shore yields a plum assignment for computer hacker Becky Belski and leads to the real mystery in this tight, intriguing tale: the redoubtable Becky's own troubled past. Working on the divorce case for an Evanston, Ill., company engaged in dubiously legal information retrieval, Becky comes across the name of a stepbrother and is suddenly preoccupied by a history she has not thought about for years. When Becky was five, her mother was convicted of murdering her stepfather; Becky was sent to Iowa, where she was soon adopted and her name changed. Becky's older stepbrothers still live nearby; the elder, cold and secretive, tells Becky her mother is dead; the younger is attracted to her. In crisp prose marked by economical humor, Haddad ( The Academic Factor ) underplays Becky's early traumas as over time her vaguely recalled past is replaced by a real one and she is required finally to be brave, rather than simply dogged and endearingly plucky. (Aug.)