cover image The Serpentine Wall

The Serpentine Wall

Jim DeBrosse. St. Martin's Press, $17.95 (327pp) ISBN 978-0-312-02278-5

When a flash fire roars through the River Queen, a stern-wheeler converted into a sin palace, and a Cincinnati porno king and a dozen local football heroes and whores are killed, all the evidence points to arson. When the investigating authorities say it was an accident, ace reporter Rick Decker of the Cincinnati Eagle scents a cover-up . This well-plotted whodunit is in the Raymond Chandler-Ross McDonald tradition of American detective fiction. An apparently straightforward crime leads the investigation gradually away from the low-lifes who appear to be the main perpetrators and victims, and towards ostensible pillars of social rectitude, who turn out to be the real perpetrators and, in a sense, victims too. Underneath it all is a dirty secret which belies the facade a respectable family presents to the world. This first novel is thoroughly entertaining. (Dec.)