KING OF HEARTS
by Susan Moody
A chance notice that her late father's namesake, Handsome Harry III, is running in the Grand National makes Bellington bridge pro Cassandra Swann buckle down to solve his decades-old murder. The official story is that Handsome Harry was stabbed in a fight that broke out in front of his pub, but Cassie, questioning the surviving witnesses—one concerned party gets fatally stabbed herself before Cassie can get to her—becomes convinced that her father's killing, and maybe the fight itself, was choreographed in advance. Meantime, there's present-day crime as well, as the hate campaign against Dr. Sammi Ray and his wife escalates from nasty notes and nastier parcels shoved through the door to murder. Or is the official story here wrong as well, with racial baiting only a front for ne'er-do-well actor son Rashid's strangling of his disapproving father? With minimal encouragement from her lover, Sgt. Paul Walsh, who can't even decide whether he's still married, Cassie wraps up both cases—one with a neatly unexpected solution, the other a surprise only to Cassie. Cassie's third case (Grand Slam, 1995, etc.) shows continued warmth and ingenuity—and the heroine's continued inability to tear herself loose from the demons of her previous books. Bridge fans will miss any glimpse of Cassie at the table; she might just as well be a steamfitter this time out.