ELIZABETH POWERS – All That Glitters: The Case of the Ice-Cold Diamond. Doubleday, hardcover, 1981. Avon, paperback, 1983.

   Years ago Mary Roberts Rinehart’s heroines wandered into trouble in mansions with secret passages. More modern is Viera Kolarova in Elizabeth Powers’ All That Glitters, who travels all over New York City, finding bodies, running from killers, and only as an afterthought informing the police of what she has learned.

   She finds her first corpse just prior to the weekend, saying cleverly, “Thank God Friday only comes once a week.” That offset such Had-I-But-Known lines as “I might have reflected a bit on what was bothering me and have saved myself the trouble of the mess I got into.”

   Incidentally, acting the role of what Boucher called “the Gothic idiot” is not restricted by sex. Many years ago, I observed the same characteristics in a male, Professor Foley in Michael Kenyon’s May You Die in Ireland (1965).

Bibliographic Note:   Viera Kolarova made one later appearance, in On Account of Murder, a paperback original from Avon in 1984. As a refugee from Communist Czechoslovakia who finds work in New York City, her name correctly spelled is Viera Kolářová.