Love Cools

Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains again serve as the stage for duplicity and murder in this wonderful whodunit by the author of the Edgar-nominated Passion Play . Six weeks after TV writer and Shakespeare scholar Sarah Davidson's dies in a fire, her husband Oscar dismisses teenager Richard Blackburn from the Montpelier School for Boys on a charge of plagiarism. Vowing revenge, Richard--whose reputation as a prankster raises lingering questions about his possible involvement in the fatal fire--enrolls in summer school, where Oscar will be teaching. Meanwhile, Richard's mother, Patricia, an actress written out of a soap opera by Sarah, has possession of the dead woman's final manuscript, a monograph on A Midsummer Night's Dream . But Oscar has already written his own analysis of the play and signed Sarah's name to it. Richard discovers Oscar's deception and plots vengeance, but a series of grisly murders proves that someone else has an interest in the original manuscript. Bain provides a white-knuckler of a resolution, and prepares for it with biting satire, insightful narrative and memorable characters, which make this mystery remarkably rich. ( Sept. )