Stephanie

This atmospheric suspense thriller by the author of the Poldark series and Marnie roams from India to England. James Locke, a disabled WW II hero and gardener extraordinaire, refuses to accept an inquest's ruling that his daughter Stephanie's death was ``by misadventure.'' A ``cheerful rebel'' of 21, Stephanie had taken up with 38-year-old, twice-married Errol Colton, a photographer involved with international ``tourist development.'' On a business trip to sweltering, sultry Goa, India, Stephanie discovers that Errol's briefcase holds a suspicious wad of money along with receipts for flax (code jargon for heroin). At the same time, young law clerk Narish Prasad is forced by a loan shark who backed his gambling debuts to ingest 80 condom-clad packets of heroin to smuggle into England. Their stories collide when Locke pursues the trail of an ``accumulation of untoward circumstances,'' including a grammatically incorrect suicide note and a long-ago murder in Edinburgh. Intriguing characters range from a philanthropist who is about to receive Oxford University's highest honor to nefarious underworld thugs who are involved in a drug ring that stretches from India to Corfu to England. Graham's page-turner combines characters with rich dimensions and spiraling plot twists, and the penultimate scene in Cardiff, Wales's Llandaff Cathedral is mortifyingly trenchant. (Apr.)