cover image Pattern for Terror

Pattern for Terror

Pentecost Hugh. Carroll & Graf Publishers, $15.95 (155pp) ISBN 978-0-88184-519-8

MWA Grand Master Pentecost offers fans an overblown but suspenseful story in this addition to the Uncle George series ( Death by Fire ). An expert detective, George follows clues in the New England town of Lakeview to the hideaway where drug dealers are holding his 10-year-old nephew, Joey, whom they have seriously beaten. While doctors fight to save Joey's life, George trails the escaped hoods, partners of a teacher at the exclusive Lakeview Academy who died recently, when a bag of heroin he had swallowed broke in his stomach. George reconstructs the teacher's last day, discovering that he was moonlighting at Columbia University in Manhattan. Asking questions there, George gets so close to the dead courier's sources that they plant a bomb in his car which explodes--luckily, when he's across the street. Both Uncle George and Joey survive incessant blows before a somewhat mechanical, happy ending. (Feb.)