cover image DON'T BELIEVE YOUR LYING EYES: A Darryl Billups Mystery

DON'T BELIEVE YOUR LYING EYES: A Darryl Billups Mystery

Blair S. Walker, . . Ballantine/One World, $22.95 (240pp) ISBN 978-0-345-44682-4

Those who enjoyed the first two books in this series (Up Jumped the Devil; Hidden in Plain View) will welcome back Walker's African-American sleuth-journalist, but for others an engaging hero can't rescue a weak plot. A reporter for the Baltimore Herald, Darryl is dispatched to look into a bloodbath at a local personal storage facility that has left three dead and two Baltimore police detectives wounded. The gunplay was intended to prevent the discovery of a corpse in one of the storage areas, but when that proves unsuccessful, one of the city's power players arranges for the body's theft from the coroner's office and its eventual cremation. More violence follows as Darryl, aided by the attractive female detective who survived the shootout, attempts to identify the vanishing cadaver. Luckily, the distinctive jewelry seen on the body is a near-instant match with baubles owned by a singer reported missing in 1984. Early on, the author reveals who's responsible for the chanteuse's death, while Darryl and friends walk into traps and deadly situations as if they had no common sense at all. Despite paper-thin supporting characters (the female detective is of course a beauty who must play down her looks to get ahead in the police force), Darryl himself, nervous about his upcoming marriage to his longtime girlfriend, has a certain amusing charm. On his future (black) mother-in-law, he comments: "If prizes were given for sounding like a white suburbanite trying to talk black, Camille would be the undisputed champ." (June 3)

Forecast:With a five-city author tour and marketing to African American Connection and other black media venues, expect healthy sales.