DEAD OVER HEELS

More angst for the author's sweet southern heroine Aurora (Roe) Teagarden (Shakespeare's Landlord, p. 860, etc.), now married to mega-mogul Martin Bartell, working part-time at the library, and enjoying the friendship and security provided by Angel and Shelby Youngblood, who live in the apartment over the garage. But everything changes one sunny afternoon when the body of local police detective Jack Burns comes crashing onto her lawn, dropped from a small plane. Roe and Burns were mild antagonists, and so she's subjected to close questioning by Sheriff Lanier of the Lawrenceton police, whose officers include Arthur Smith, once Roe's fianc‚, now separating from wife Lynn, and stoic Paul Allison, briefly married to Roe's reporter friend Sally. Meanwhile, other disquieting incidents are piling up—phone calls with silence on the other end; a ribbon tied on Madeleine the cat; delivery of flowers minus a sender's name; and, most seriously, an attack on Roe's library co-worker after a low-keyed confrontation between them, and yet another on Shelby Youngblood that puts him in the hospital. There's more, but not until much later, in the aftermath of Jack Burns's funeral, does the light dawn for Roe—barely in time to effect a last-minute rescue. Harris's gossipy, just-between-us-girls style is as ingratiating as ever, but it can't begin to redeem a cop-out plot as thin and unconvincing as this one. More meat and less icing might help future episodes of Roe's eventful life.