cover image A Loose Connection

A Loose Connection

M. R. D. Meek. Scribner Book Company, $16.95 (192pp) ISBN 978-0-684-19134-8

All too many improbable coincidences, chance encounters and unlikely leaps of deductive reasoning are essential to this latest adventure of Meek's lawyer-sleuth, Lennox Kemp. Kemp never realizes until the very end exactly what it is that he is investigating--he thinks he is merely sorting out an office personnel conflict--but the central mystery really has to do with a 20-year-old fire in a small electrical contracting firm. Gradually the question emerges: if secretary Queenie Managan did not die in that fire as was believed (and it appears that she most definitely did not), then who did--and why are others connected to that event now dying as well? Only dedicated fans of the Kemp mysteries will care. (Dec.)