DEVIL'S GONNA GET HIM

Investment banker Lincoln E. Storey's string of successesplus his status as one of Newark's local boys made very, very goodends abruptly when somebody slips a lethal dose of peanut butter (he's allergic) into the bean dip at a fund- raiser he's giving for Deputy District Attorney Stella Pharr's state assembly bid. Tamara Hayle, the shamus Storey had just hired to shadow his stepdaughter, Alexa, and her unsuitable beau, documentarist Brandon Pike, is left high and dry too, with nothing better to do than pick out Storey's killer from the bevy of suspects he'd surrounded himself with: his upscale wife, Daphne; senior restaurateur Jackson Tate; Tate's employee Tasha Green; and, of course, Alexa, Pike, and Stella Pharr (who ``looked like she needed some fast fun in the sun and a good laxative''). Tamara conscientiously uncovers a dizzying series of undercover liaisonsit seems there's nobody in the cast who hasn't slept with everybody elsebut it's her unapologetically plainspoken voice that makes this tale as memorable as her debut (When Death Comes Stealing, 1994). Capably plotted downscale fun.