PRELUDE TO DEATH

Lucky Dick Aldridge. When his live-in lover, Pulitzer Prizewinning poet Corrye Edwards, is shot to death by somebody the Key West police think is him (all right, he's not completely lucky), he can use his dime to phone his sister, New York shamus Blaine Stewart, and she can come charging on down determined to save him—even after he primly announces, in a prison cell reunion, that he's changed his mind, thanks just the same. ``How come?'' wonders Blaine (Leap of Faith, 1994, etc.)—especially after Dick's long-suffering lawyer, Laska Brown, springs Dick on his own hook only to see him jump bail, and a sleazy local p.i. who hinted at a client that could help Dick for a measly ten grand turns up dead. So far, the case seems routine; but once Blaine's former CIA source Calton Wolff links Corrye's murder to the politics of both her late husband Augustin Medieta, a Cuban ÇmigrÇ who never lost the hope of toppling Castro, and to the Snakes and Vipers, a conspiratorial secret society of Yale alums that makes Skull and Bones look like Laurel and Hardy—well, that's when things start to get really dicey. Sadly, though, Zukowski's wild plot loses conviction as it gains altitude; so even when it seems that Blaine can't trust her brother any more than anybody else, you'll be hard-pressed to care. Strictly for Castro-baiters and fans of female testosterone.