GIRL MOST LIKELY

Among the million visitors the
little town of Galena, Illinois—the birthplace of U.S. Grant—attracts in a year
are the attendees of a high school class reunion that seems to include a very
determined killer.

Even though her department is
limited to 12 officers, Police Chief Krista Larson loves her job, loves her
father, retired Dubuque Chief of Detectives Keith Larson, and loves the friends
she went to school with—loves one of them, reporter Jerry Ward, so much that
until recently she let him live under her roof. The only classmate she’s not so
crazy about is glamourpuss Astrid Lund, who, years after stealing Jerry from
Krista and then tossing him away, like so many other men, landed a high-profile
job as an investigative reporter for a Chicago TV station. Soon after the
reunion opens at the Lake View Lodge, whose general manager, hunky classmate
David Landry, has made it available to the 65 attendees, Astrid fulfills her
destiny by getting stabbed to death. It doesn’t take long for Krista and Keith,
working together, to link her murder to the stabbing of Sue Logan, another
classmate, in faraway Clearwater, Florida, the summer before. Lots of people
might have had a grudge against Astrid, but why would somebody kill Sue as
well? Is there a larger pattern here? And will the killer strike again?
Answering these questions requires the father-daughter team to put lots of
routine questions to lots of unmemorable suspects and then to put some
more—until it’s time for still another reunion, with the leading suspects
gathered together once again in the hope that one of them will crack.

The result is a sedate thriller that
reads less like Collins’ usual retro-pulp (Quarry’s Climax, 2017, etc.)
and more like that of his wife, Barbara Collins. Not that there’s anything
wrong with that.