AN OCCASIONAL HELL

Goaded beyond endurance by months of knowing about her husband Alex's Saturday-morning dalliance with waitress Jeri Gillen, Elizabeth Catanzaro phones Jeri's rock-singer husband Rodney to tell him where the couple's enjoying themselves—and a few hours later she's facing police inquiries about Alex's murder and Jeri and Rodney's disappearance. Elizabeth calls Alex's colleague Ernest DeWalt, who retired from private investigations after a shooting left him without working kidneys and then retired from writing crime novels for no special reason. It's a good choice: despite indulging in too many windy reflections about this vale of tears, DeWalt is dogged in nosing out Alex's suspicious actions before his death, and properly intuitive about the elderly Jewett family, who claim they never suspected the weekly trysts on their property over a year and a half. Playwright-novelist Silvis (Excelsior, 1988) settles into the detective genre with unassuming authority and a refreshing lack of condescension.