The Ice Maiden Cometh Not

In Boyle’s amusing ninth adventure featuring PI Gil Yates (after 2011’s What Now, King Lear?), egotistical surgeon Chester Kulp recruits Yates to determine whether his amiable son-in-law Sandy Straus’s fatal fall was suicide. At $10,000 a day, Gil is willing to put aside both his fear of air travel and dislike for the doctor. Moreover, he’s pleasantly surprised to discover, upon arriving in straitlaced Muhlenheim, Pa., that the doctor’s daughter, Ginger, is a bona fide bombshell. Her picture-perfect “bereaved widow” image may not, however, be all that it seems. Stomping through the town’s dense hedges of social decorum in search of the truth, Gil sometimes grates with his relentless jocularity, but ultimately provides a spark lacking from the convoluted but shallow plot. Noir by way of Wodehouse, Boyle’s light concoction will most appeal to readers looking for whimsy rather than mystery. (Nov.)