cover image A Fighting Chance

A Fighting Chance

Mignon Good Eberhart. Random House (NY), $14.95 (245pp) ISBN 978-0-394-55082-4

This 58th mystery by Eberhart, winner of an MWA Grand Master Award, is a story based on the kind of upper-class people who appeal to the author's many fans. Jim Wingate decides to surface after five years as a fugitive from a murder charge. Insistent on proving his innocence, Jim meets his loving fiancee, Julie Farnham, where she's living in exclusive Shad Cove, New York, and they go to their small, Conn. hometown, scene of the crime. Another murder makes Jim doubly suspect, and it looks as if he's doomed. There are, however, several people involved in shady doings which give Jim's supporters the ""fighting chance'' to clear his name. An attempt on Julie's life adds excitement to the climactic scene and solidifies the case against the killer. Descriptions of creamy life styles in Manhattan and exurbia in crease the fun of solving the puzzle. (June 2)