Prescription for Death

The death of a prostitute and a bizarre killing at an art gallery turn out to be two pieces of the same intriguing puzzle in McGiffin's new mystery. Dr. Maxene St. Clair, of Milwaukee's St. Agnes Hospital, makes a house call on Latoya Thompson, a prostitute who has suddenly turned seriously ill. While there, St. Clair barely misses the drive-by shooting of Wyoming Syzinski, a friend of St. Clair's favorite police detective, Joseph Grabowski. Grabowski is working security for the opening of a show by sculptor Soren Berendorf at the gallery Rhinestones, the pet project of some doctors' wives (and one ex-wife). St. Clair swings by to see Grabowski; minutes later, a massive sculpture suspended from the ceiling crashes down on Berendorf. Berendorf's death becomes Grabowski's case; meanwhile St. Clair looks into why Latoya died. As in Emergency Murder, McGiffin offers a well-paced yarn with characters who are easy to dislike, and the unsettled St. Clair-Grabowski relationship adds a dash of spice. But there's room for one quibble: McGiffin piles on solution variations in the last 20 pages without satisfactorily explaining why the real solution was the only inevitable one. (Dec. )