cover image Ropedancer's Fall

Ropedancer's Fall

M. K. Lorens. Crimeline, $3.95 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-553-28312-9

New York English professor, veteran crime novelist and amateur sleuth Winston Marlowe Sherman gets a startling telephone call: his friend John Falkner, an alcoholic and failed writer, has vanished, along with a teenage son, Mickey. No sooner does Sherman dispatch his pal Eddie Merriman, a retired Milton specialist, to investigate, than John's dead body is discovered by his former wife, a cellist, in the freight elevator at the headquarters of her company, the Manhattan Chamber Orchestra. John, Sherman reveals, was brutally slain after he learned that someone was siphoning money from the prestigious arts foundation where he worked as a publicist and funneling it to fictitious grant applicants. Soon, the cops, Sherman, Mickey, who has been found, Eddie and other would-be Sherlock Holmeses are hunting for John's killer and for the missing funds. Despite a seemingly endless cast of characters, this fast-paced whodunit by the author of Sweet Narcissus is intricately plotted and packed with surprises and a succession of wisecracks. (Aug.)