Cross-Check - Hardcover

A ninth challenge for Anna Peters (Backfire, 1994, etc.) and her Washington-based Executive Security, Inc., comes from the professional sports world. Mostly because of a widely publicized locker-room brawl, Jurgen Parkes, star hockey player for the Orlando Showmen, is a prime suspect in the murder of Alf Rene, a teammate and friend from the players' Canadian boyhood. Parkes's savvy agent Sammy Allert has hired Anna to get his client off the hook by finding Rene's real killer. And so Anna, plagued by back problems and middle-age blues, travels to Florida, where she finds Rene's panic-stricken wife Suzi in the process of closing up their expensive house and moving her family to a secret destination. Her late husband's tenuous connection to Horizon Investments, run by respected community leader Bennett Dowling, leads Anna to a spate of tough interviews and some even tougher criss-crossing of the state, especially after Suzi vanishes; the body of her no-good brother Billy Deever is found in Lake Monroe; and Alf Rene's good- natured agent, Wurf Stanford, is found in an abandoned van, shot to death. Dull, repetitive interrogations; dreary journeys laced with would-be colorful characters; lots of the latest computer technology, and Anna's musings on the pros and cons of retirement eventually lead to an unconvincing motive, an unstartling culprit- -and the conviction that Anna's retirement may be overdue. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

The mayhem in professional hockey is usually confined to on-ice brawling. When it becomes murder, private investigator Anna Peters gets involved. Alf Rene of the Orlando Showmen is dead, and teammate Jurgen Parkes is the prime suspect. Peters, no hockey junkie, soon learns that the careers of the accused killer and the victim were oddly intertwined, despite Parkes being a star and Rene only a journeyman. After Rene's widow disappears, Anna is finally able to make sense of a byzantine trail that leads her from shady investments to personal jealousy and professional envy. There are also hints that this may be Peters' last case. She sells her interest in the agency and seems headed for retirement. Let's hope not. The ninth Peters mystery is one of the dependable series' best, and Peters remains among the most complex, fully drawn female series leads in crime fiction. Wes Lukowsky