A Slash of Scarlet

St. Paul private eye Devon MacDonald follows her debut in The Turquoise Tattoo with this ingeniously plotted case. When two women show up in her office claiming to have been romanced and then bilked by the same con man--one Brentwood J. Peters--Devon's feminist outrage fuels her professional curiosity, and before long she has tracked down yet a third victim. Using clues drawn from phone records, charge-card statements and canceled checks, the feisty gumshoe picks up Peters's scent in a wealthy Monterey, Calif., neighborhood and heads west to set a trap for him, advising her clients to be ready to follow when she calls. Passing herself off as a prospective buyer of property on his street, Devon quickly establishes a relationship with Peters remarkably like the ones her clients have described. Her plan to lure him to a romantic cabin-in-the-woods getaway and there confront him with his three victims backfires horribly when someone slits his throat. Before she can determine the murderer's identity, Devon turns up still more victims of the con man whose misogynistic behavior gave the novel's women such good cause to welcome his downfall. (June)