Six Key Cut

Wealthy Vietnam vet Sid Mehring goes to Miami to learn whether his young ward Jamie, orphaned sister of one of his dead buddies, has been murdered or been part of a cocaine scam. She's in love with Byron Racicot, who is in homosexual thrall to the sadistic Lex, mastermind of the plot to steal the coke from Colombian gangsters. Byron's rich father negotiates with the Colombians to buy By's life, while Lex and a crooked vice cop scheme, separately, to get away with the coke. An unnamed derelict becomes the spirit of vengeance stalking Lex, By, Jamie, the crooked cop and just about everybody else. Most readers may be turned off by Crawford's deliberately mysterious, arty prose, and his gratuitous use of violence. Crawford wrote Lords of the Plains. (May)