cover image The Man in the Moss-Colored Trousers

The Man in the Moss-Colored Trousers

Mary Bringle. Doubleday Books, $12.95 (180pp) ISBN 978-0-385-23555-6

Bringle (The Footpath Murders has brought off a gem of a mystery. A half dozen kids of Gilligan's Crescent, a working-class street in the village of Balgriffin (""seven miles from Dublin Centre''), discover the body of a stranger in an abandoned race track. Kindly, middle-aged detective Sean Lynch has his work cut out for him, largely because the corpse lacks identification. As Lynch probes gently, the story unfolds slowly. As if through a swirling Irish fog we get tantalizing glimpses that only raise more questions: who was the dead man? What terrible thing happened to young Matty Keegan in Belfast? What is the handsome barman Tom Mulligan hiding? Will the visiting American Yeats scholar be caught in the kids' innocent lies? The ending will seem unlikely only to readers with little patience or imagination. The invigorating local color springs mainly from the characters, who run a full spectrum of age and charm. (October 3)