COLLISION COURSE

The title Hilton saved for this seventh adventure of private eye Tess Grey and her fiance, Nicolas “Po” Villere, would have suited any of the first six but is even more appropriate here.

After telling off her adoptive mother, Jessie Cameron, and dumping her boyfriend, bar busboy Jacob Doyle, Hayley Cameron has gone the extra mile by running away from home. Jessie acknowledges that her wild child is 21 but still wants Tess to find her, assure her of her mother’s love, and plead with her to come home. The complication, to use one of those understated words that rarely comes up here, is that Madison Toner, who’s Tess and Po’s most likely lead to information about Hayley’s whereabouts, is busy working an insurance scam together with her father, lobsterman Mike Toner, and that Kelly Ambrose, the imperious wife of major player Blake Ambrose, has just sent a trio of hirelings to muscle in on their operation, skimming 50% of their receipts off the top. So Hayley’s resolve to put her mother in the rear-view mirror is exceeded only by everyone else’s determination to keep this interlocking criminal directorate under wraps. The moments when Tess and Po catch up with Hayley and Tess gets to make her speech on behalf of Jessie are only the signals for further developments that include kidnapping, extended scenes of torture, a fatal car crash, and a finale in which the malefactors, outwitted and outmuscled by Tess and Po, turn on each other.

Action galore. The circular firing squad that ends the tale and several characters is a particularly nice touch.