Killing Frost

This is the 10th in an uneven series (Dead Letter, The Last Laugh, etc.) that usually manages, nevertheless, to deliver the goods. Riggs's often insufferable sleuth is small-town newspaper publisher Garth Ryland, who gets to charm troubled ladies, make the disgruntled town cop look dense and bemoan the onset of hard times in the little Wisconsin hamlet of Oakalla. Here, Ryland is one of the first to find the body near the pig farm. The flesh is kind of rubbery, and the extremities are missing. Clarkie, the town copper, has a spate of burglaries on his hands and could naturally use Garth's loquacious assistance. As usual, tiny Oakalla manages to hide a good number of sinister folk, most of whom turn out to be distantly related. Riggs works hard to keep all the narrative balls up in the air; a few more characters either still alive or not in some way implicated in the robberies, would have made his task easier. As it is, many readers may get to the killer early on, simply by a process of elimination. (Oct.)