TILL THE BUTCHERS CUT HIM DOWN

No sooner has Sharon McCone cut loose from the All Souls Legal Cooperative to go it on her own—don't worry, it's an amicable divorce; she's still renting space from them—than her old college friend Suits Gordon, scam artist turned corporate messiah, hires her to find out who's trying to kill him. Sharon, skeptical at first, shortly finds more than enough enemies, victims of Suits's ruthless turnaround medicine for his latest project, a bid to move Golden Gate (Shipping) Lines from Oakland back to a refurbished seaport at Hunters Point, and from two earlier turnarounds that left deep scars in Lost Hope, Nev., and Monora, Pa. But before Sharon can set out for these depressingly burned-out towns—where she'll meet still more people who'd dance at her client's funeral- -Suits's wife, Anna, is killed in an explosion, and he pays Sharon off and disappears, leaving her with only the help of her eager- beaver, foot-in-mouth nephew Mick to head off the violence she's certain is still on the way. Muller's elaborate plot, very clearly laid out, is spacious rather than complex, and the characters keep coming at you in waves instead of hanging around long enough to make an impression. Not up to Wolf in the Shadows (1993).