Baby Mine: A Meg Halloran and Vince Gutierrez Mystery

The best thing about LaPierre's sixth Port Silva mystery (after Old Enemies) is how the novel quickly sneaks behind the picturesque facade of a fictional town on the Northern California coast to reveal the hard truths of modern life. ""So gradually that a busy, self-absorbed person could fail to notice, the empty storefronts had begun to appear.... Meg counted among the missing a small food store, a shoe store. A store selling kitchenware...."" Meg Halloran, a high-school teacher and single mother, has recently married Port Silva's police chief, Vincent Gutierrez. The novel begins with her getting badly beaten by a gang of ski-masked teenage thugs as she tries to stop an attack on a homeless man. It ends with Vincent getting even more badly beaten by a crazed villain. In between, there are two murders--of young Hispanic women who live in a seedy motel called the Winner's Circle and are connected to a controversial local fertility clinic--and the suspicious death by fire of a crusty old doctor who was like a father to Vince. There are also more relatives and friends than in one of Marcia Muller's novels, so trying to figure out who's who can be daunting. LaPierre is one of those writers who describes virtually every bite of food or swallow of drink her characters consume. Her new novel is absorbing, but its colorful landscape would be a lot less cluttered if she left more to readers' imaginations. (Oct.)