cover image Sleeping Pretty

Sleeping Pretty

William Paul. St. Martin's Press, $19.95 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-312-14418-0

A pretty young fortune-teller lies cold and dead on a rock in the middle of a Scottish loch, having foretold her fate in a magazine article. An older man besotted with her hangs from a rope in a nearby cottage. His widow falls into the arms of the dead woman's father, an undertaker who touches cold flesh and changes the features of a corpse. The editor of the magazine, who is the brother of the clairvoyant's lover, embarks on a vodka bender. The dead woman's estranged husband is caught `entertaining' when the Edinburgh police come to call. With agile dialogue, Paul unravels these tangled relationships in less than 200 pages, in the latest case for less than wholly moral Edinburgh DCI David Fyfe (Sleeping Dogs), who works here with the short-skirted, sexually demanding Moya McBain. Unfortunately, there's little room left for local color, or for a credible plot. This one starts with a half-boiled red herring and then jumps towards a conclusion that blurs into a stream of ailing bodies being rushed to the infirmary, where the bewildered Fyfe, with two black eyes, tries to keep a head and body count. (May)