cover image Brotherly Love

Brotherly Love

Randye Lordon. St. Martin's Press, $18.95 (260pp) ISBN 978-0-312-09254-2

Sibling rivalry and the suggestion that a PI's supposedly dead brother is still alive power a fast-paced, though not always convincing, first novel. While reading the newspaper, brassy Manhattanite Sydney Sloane learns of a jailbreak by convicted murderer Noah Alexander. The prisoner's mug shot surprises her, for ``Noah'' bears an amazing resemblance to her older brother David, thought to have been killed in Israel. Although Sydney considered David an unlovable jerk during his verifiable lifetime, she doesn't think him capable of murder and sets out to prove Noah/David's innocence. Her investigation becomes problematic when gun-toting goons also descend on the trail, someone kills Noah's girlfriend and Sydney (who's openly lesbian) falls for the 25-year-old daughter of a murder victim. While the heroine's casual, often flip narration hastens this story along, some details fail to ring true: Sydney takes David's apparent return frm the dead quite calmly, exhibits little fear when confronted in her apartment by a hulking man and easily locates New Yorkers quite willing to assist with her detective work. Nonetheless, Lordon's first effort proves entertaining, if not particularly taut. (July)