Full-bodied red Book

Fans of Quinn Parker, the San Francisco phobia therapist and amateur sleuth who starred in Bruce Zimmerman's highly praised thrillers Blood Under the Bridge and Thicker than Water can rejoice, for Quinn is back in a new adventure that outdoes its predecessors. This time Quinn discovers that one of his patients, Phillip Chesterton, the young, agoraphobic heir to a Napa Valley wine business, is missing. In a violent confrontation, Phillip's millionaire stepfather, Frank Matson, a rough diamond with a mysterious past, blames Quinn for Phillip's disappearance - and then vanishes himself. That's the prelude to a series of gruesome murders, with Quinn the prime suspect in the eyes of a tough - and crooked - sheriff. Quinn is forced to dodge attempts on his life at the same time as he tries to solve several puzzles, including Phillip's whereabouts, the cause of Phillip's real father's death, and what Frank Matson was doing in Southeast Asia twenty years earlier. And it all comes to a breathtaking and violent climax in the rugged desert of Mexico's Baja California. Happily, Quinn's pal Hank Wilkie, the would-be but mostly unemployed stand-up comic, and his loyal wife, Carol, are back, too - only this time Carol has booted Hank out of their house because of his fecklessness, and he has moved in with Quinn. How Quinn copes with this development and whether or not Hank and Carol get back together provide a sometimes hilarious subplot, while Quinn's involvement with the lovely and appealing divorcee Molly adds a romantic counterpoint. Additional pleasures are insights into the California wine business, and the snappy dialogue and engaging humor that are trademarks of Bruce Zimmerman's gifted style - a style that, along with his sense of pacing, has entranced hard-to-please critics from coast to coast and earned him enthusiastic comparisons to Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald, Shirley Jackson, and John D. MacDonald.