cover image In the Dead of Winter

In the Dead of Winter

Abbey Penn Baker. St. Martin's Press, $19.95 (247pp) ISBN 978-0-312-11413-8

The pseudonymous Baker's first novel opens with promise, which is not quite kept, and evokes a convincing sense of place (Northampton, Mass.) and time (1918). Myrl Adler Norton, professor of logic at Smith College and the daughter of Irene Adler, and her teaching assistant, Faye Tullis, are called to help a student whose room has been ransacked. Approaching the boarding house, they hear a shot and see a man dash past. Inside they find landlady Alyssa Dansen dead. Daily, Dansen would sit in her window without moving. Each evening, at 8 p.m., her drapes would close and she would play the same phonograph record. Myrl and Faye discover that Dansen has been killed, stuffed and mounted and that her drapes and phonograph are controlled by weights and pulleys. Myrl recognizes the recorded voice (on the phonograph), and soon she and Faye are deeply involved in blackmail, diamond smuggling and more murder. The novel becomes muddled by too many (nearly two dozen) supporting players and the inevitable arrival of Sherlock Holmes, whose identity as Myrl's father is virtually stated at the outset. Baker could have left Holmes out; the two lively women sleuths would have been more interesting free of his influence. (Oct.)