Death by Degrees: A Mystery

This debut by a former CIA employee suffers from the angst of its narrator/hero, Peter Haas, a former CIA agent now handling security for a private college in California. Peter's boss is university president Harold Piggott (aka Piggy), who was also his boss at CIA, and Wilson spends too much time on Peter's explanations and rationalizations of the bond between him and Piggy. The duo have a problem when a university administrator is murdered, left nude except for a black lace garter, and surrounded by various sex toys. The dead man has a fancy car, a fancy house, a modest salary and no clearly discernible personality traits. Peter's waxing forth on Piggy's erudition and his own worries--about being middle-aged and lonely, about having worked for the Company--get tiresome. Le Carre this isn't. But Wilson's prose is a cut above the usual, and Peter's growing relationship with Hildy, the university's director of public safety, offers some solid characterization. More of the same, with additional drama and less rumination, would lend Wilson's next effort the streamlining this one lacks. (Oct.)