P. M. CARLSON – Murder Unrenovated, Maggie Ryan #4. Bantam, paperback original; 1st printing, January 1988.

   This novel takes Maggie Ryan back to 1972, and her fourth mystery adventure. She and her actor-husband Nick O’Connor are searching for a brownstone to buy and renovate in Brooklyn, but the one they find has both a rent-control tenant in the basement, and a body upstairs.

   Maggie and her husband have a cheerful lust for living and a love of people that is strictly contagious and romantic, more perfect than life, but the reading is fine. Only the ending is disappointing, as the killer, literally, is someone just brought in off the street.