Baker's Gold

Cohn's debut, a modern morality tale, falls flat in this modern morality tale. On the rainy Olympic Peninsula, 44-year-old Baker, a former football star whose racketeering parents were killed when he was in high school, is living like a hermit. When he sprains his ankle, a teenage girl called Flea, who has been combing the area for hidden treasure, drives him to the hospital. Flea's treasure is the cache of gold bars never recovered from the Great Seattle Bank Heist of 1958. The only survivor of the robbery is a former sheriff who's in the hospital's mental ward. Baker visits him and is given a paper heart with a drawing of mountains and a cabin. The former sheriff is killed and Flea insists someone is shooting at her, convincing Baker that someone else is desperate to find the fortune. Readers will quickly lose interest in the handful of shallow characters and Baker's continual moralizing on the evils of lucre. (Oct.)