Eric Wright Smoke Detector (1984)

     Eric Wright Smoke Detector (1984) #2 in the Charlie Salter saga. An antique dealer dies because of arson. Charlie gets the job because homicide is busy on other things. The murder turns out to be accidental, but the second one is not. Their roots lie in the past, when a man took on safe-keeping of a box containing Japanese prints. He kept this commitment until his son-in-law stole the box and sold it to the antique dealer, whereupon a chain of the usual coincidences and misunderstandings and withholding of information precipitate another murder and finally the solution to the case. Trouble is, the suspect Charlie dislikes is innocent, and the one he likes is the murderer. Charlie’s family figures prominently in this novel, and again it seems like Wright is working out his own family problems through his fiction. Or reporting on them; it’s not clear. **½ (2005)