FEEDING FRENZY

One of Cape Cod's beaches has a serious litter problem: bodies keep washing up on the sand, shredded and gnawed to the bone. And the award-winning weekly newspaper editor keeps mentioning how close all this distress is to widow Tillie Talbot's sailing camp, which just happens to be situated on prime real estate that slick developer Fast Freddy Costello continues to make offers on. Tillie thinks someone's out to get her and asks Aristotle ``Soc'' Socarides, a neighborly fisherman/sleuth (Death in Deep Water, 1992), for help—which he sandwiches in between extricating a nephew from a drug bust, romancing dolphin-trainer Sally, and worrying about his ailing fishing buddy Sam. It'll take a bomb blast, an almost lethal underwater dive, and a confrontation with a bogus film crew before Soc and his pal Flagg, a Native American government spook, eliminate all the plotters, counterplotters, and chemical waste canisters from the area, thus freeing the area for Miz Tillie and her summer revelers. Leisurely, chatty, and far-fetched—but Soc is ingratiating company, and the scenery's attractive. Derivative (Parker's stuff; Benchley's Jaws) but easygoing and likable.