TWICE

Two-hundred-year-old curses, ghosts, rumors of incest, twins and more twins, and nasty critters scurrying below the New York subways occupy crime writer–turned–private eye Lydia Strong and her lover Jeffrey Mark.

Along from twinges indicating all may not be right with her pregnancy, Lydia has a more pressing problem. She’s being stalked by Jed McIntyre, the looney-toon who just escaped from the asylum where he was sent after killing her mother 15 years ago. In addition, she has to confront a client, Eleanor Ross, who’s keeping lots of secrets from her: specifically, (1) that her husband and her daughter Julian’s first husband died exactly the same way as Julian’s second husband, at the hands of a rabid mystery attacker who slashed them in a rage, and (2) that the family tree is rife with twins. The case will take Lydia, her live-in partner Jeffrey, and their p.i. chum Dax chasing from the stinking New York subway tunnels to the oddball town of Haunted, New York, and bring them face to face with descendants of a slave tragedy, a fusty librarian, a nanny with a hidden agenda, poor Julian (suffering an emotional meltdown), and Jed (happily working on a new killing spree).

Though Miscione (The Darkness Gathers, 2003, etc.) dresses her females in Armani duds and tosses curse words around with abandon if not conviction, this is a flatfooted nonsuspenser undermined by all those twins running about.