FROM THE CRITICS

Kirkus Reviews

Now that Frank Decker￯﾿ﾽs let himself be elected Farrell County sheriff, he￯﾿ﾽd be just as happy to stick with cases like the trashing of gardens in his midwestern hometown of Whitford￯﾿ﾽeven though he￯﾿ﾽs sick and tired of the teenage vandal who calls to mock his ignorance after each new outrage. But things get much worse with the news that schoolteacher agent Louis Cameron has absconded with the funds of his sometime employer, Allied Insurance. Not that Frank has to do anything to catch Lou, since bank president Nathaniel Wetherston, the lead Allied stockholder, has already burned Lou￯﾿ﾽs typewritten confession, made arrangements to cover his losses, and promised to start a college fund for his children. In short, Wetherston grandly insists, there￯﾿ﾽs no crime for Frank to investigate, just rumors about Lou￯﾿ﾽs abrupt departure to be suppressed. Wetherston￯﾿ﾽs story is so obviously bogus that Frank wastes no time launching a search for Lou￯﾿ﾽs corpse. Veteran DeWeese (Whatever Became of Aunt Margaret?, 1990, etc.), however, has plenty more rabbits in his hat. Working patiently, Frank juggles his custody battle with his ex￯﾿ﾽwho￯﾿ﾽs boiling, not simmering￯﾿ﾽwith his efforts to link Wetherston￯﾿ﾽs cock-and-bull story, Lou￯﾿ﾽs disappearance, and that of Willis Ardly, a visitor from Whitford￯﾿ﾽs sister city in England, to a hundred-year-earlier pilgrimage that British citizens of Whitford made to their new American counterpart, an unlikely source that yields a steadily absorbing stream of revelations about malfeasance past and present.