THE BIG DIG

The bills that lone-wolf shamus Carlotta Carlyle’s been wrestling soften her up for Happy Eddie Conklin’s invitation to go undercover for Foundation Security. As a secretary/gofer in one of the site offices of Horgan Construction’s contribution to Boston’s mammoth Central Artery/Third Harbor Tunnel Project, she’s supposed to nose out what Eddie, spurred by an onsite tipster, calls “stuff going on. . . . Graft. Fraud.” But the gossipy inquiries she launches go no further than a rumor that somebody is selling dirt; she realizes that she’s landed the job for reasons that have nothing to do with her professional skills; her persistent questions about Krissi Horgan, the precocious but unseen daughter of well-connected head honchos Gerry and Liz Horgan, get her fired by the boss lady herself; meantime, the informant is killed in a fall from a scaffold. Luckily, Carlotta’s picked up a second case in the interim: the disappearance of dog groomer Veronica James, whose society landlady, Dana Endicott, is sure she would never have taken off for good in the Jeep Dana offered her without taking Tandy, her beloved Norwegian wolfhound. The two cases—suspected construction fraud and a demonstrably missing person—have so little to do with each other that they must be connected, and watching Carlotta tease out their deep, disturbing connections is pure pleasure.

It hardly matters that the heroine’s usual menagerie, from mobbed-up ex-lover Sam Gianette to “little sister” Paolina, is kept well in the background. Carlotta (Flashpoint, 1999, etc.) can carry this ninth case all by herself.