A WIDE AND CAPABLE REVENGE

When Eva Ramirez is shot four times through the confessional door in Chicago's Holy Name Cathedral, one-legged Lt. Nora Callum takes charge of the investigation. Battling officious Chief Raymond (``Smilin' Ray'') Melchior, Nora and her partner, easygoing Art Campbell, soon link the shooting to the case of Semyon Lugotov, a Russian ÇmigrÇ who's killed shortly after he complains that a mysterious fat man is stalking him—and whose corpse is then, in a bizarre twist, taken from its drawer in the morgue and hung from a hook. Who would have wanted Lugotov not only dead but desecrated? The answer, Nora finds after some smart police work, lies, rather improbably, with her elderly babysitter. Though it runs out of mystery before it runs out of pages, this is a likable, fast-moving debut for McCall and his appealing heroine, who seems well placed for a series.