GONNA TAKE A HOMICIDAL JOURNEY

Private eye Lauren Laurano’s on vacation in the quaint little town of Seaview, on Long Island’s North Fork, but the corpses just keep on coming. First is Bill Moffat, an anti—fast food activist found hanging from a tree. Refusing to believe the official verdict of suicide, Bill’s cousin Jean Ashton hires Lauren to prove he was murdered. It’s a baffling choice, since even townsfolk who aren’t put off by Lauren’s lesbianism aren—t likely to open up to an inquisitive female outsider. But it does give Scoppettone (Let’s Face the Music and Die, 1996, etc.) a chance to put her shamus through dead-end dialogues with every citizen of Seaview. Soon Lauren’s rejected the obvious theory that Bill was killed by equally rabid pro-development activists and connected his death not only to the Silk Scarf murders (three women strangled over a four-year period, with another slain just in time for Lauren’s investigation) but to a series of accidents that have claimed the lives of four Seaview preteen girls. Does the relentless presence of the Grim Reaper step up the tension? Not for Lauren, who simply plods on through what seems like the Seaview white pages, interviewing suspects who all, even at the moment of their arrest, remain as stubbornly lifeless as the victims.