William Hoffman is certainly one of the most literate authors of thrillers working today. His previous, Tidewater Blood, captivated a whole new audience of readers for the Virginia author, as well it should have. His new Blood and Guile will leave readers no less satisfied.

Small-town lawyer Walter Frampton, reprising his role in Tidewater Blood, finds himself on a West Virginia grouse-hunting trip with two childhood buddies, Drake Wingo and Cliff Dickens. They are joined by Wendell Ripley, owner of the property on which the hunt takes place. Drake has invited Wendell along in hopes of buying the land.

When Cliff kills Wendell in what apparently is a hunting accident, Walter cannot understand the determination of the local sheriff, a bright young man, to charge Cliff with a crime. But charge it is, and Walter's investigation in defense of Cliff becomes a struggle to get at the truth, which Cliff and Drake are hiding.

Hoffman is a master at giving his stories a sense of place and drawing his characters to be as realistic as your friends and neighbors. They speak in the tones and rhythms of the Virginias. They exude the history and the culture of those worlds. The package works wonderfully.

I cannot recommend Blood and Guile more highly. I am an unabashed William Hoffman fan.

* * *

ROSES ARE RED, by James Patterson (Little, Brown, $26.95)

Best-selling author James Patterson's device of limiting chapters to two and three pages might push readers through a story, but what good is that if, ultimately, they don't arrive anywhere? Patterson's fans, legion and loyal, seem not to have cared about that before and probably will not mind this time as they zip through his newest thriller, Roses Are Red.

Alex Cross is in danger of losing the woman he loves, Christine, because she blames him for the horror of the kidnapping she endured in a previous book and lives in terror of the kidnapper's return. If Cross loses her, he might also lose their infant son. The rift between them deepens when Cross leaves the child's christening early to join the FBI in investigating a bank robbery in Silver Spring, Md., in which the branch manager's family was murdered by the robber's accomplices.

Afterward, the criminal who thinks of himself as The Mastermind brutally murders the team that committed the robbery and homicides for him and plots a new crime with a new team. The pattern of The Mastermind's crimes varies slightly only in terms of who dies for no apparent reason. As the death toll mounts, his ultimate crime unfolds and when he pulls off that one, he turns on Cross and the FBI agents trying to catch him.

The conclusion of Roses Are Red is convoluted and, for me, unsatisfying. Characters die who shouldn't, and the surprise identity of the real Mastermind is an unexplained bombshell dropped into the very last sentence. But this leave-'em-hanging conclusion is typical of Patterson's work.

* * *

L.A. DEAD, by Stuart Woods (Putnam, $24.95)

It's about time for Stuart Woods to retire Stone Barrington, the lawyer-protagonist of his last several novels. Barrington, always impossibly involved with the world's most beautiful women, is a self-centered, egomaniacal playboy who professes to be in love with one woman at a time, even as he sinks into the sack enthusiastically with two or three others.

L.A. Dead, Barrington's latest adventure, finds him in Italy to marry Dolce Bianchi, daughter of a New York mob boss. After the civil ceremony, but before the marriage becomes official in a church ceremony, news arrives that film star Vance Calder, who wooed and wed the only woman Barrington ever really loved, has been murdered. Calder's widow, Arrington, is a suspect.

Naturally, Barrington leaves his bride the night before the altar and flies to Los Angeles to rescue Arrington. Arrington's new unmarried status dooms the marriage to Dolce, who refuses to accept her dismissal and begins stalking Barrington and his friends. She calls herself Mrs. Barrington and claims the civil ceremony made them husband and wife. Italian law is on her side.

Meanwhile, Barrington joins Arrington's defense team and tries to help her through the amnesia that clouds her memory of the night of the killing, even as he works his way through Hollywood's most beautiful women.

As Dolce's mob-boss father might say: Fugedaboutit!

- Jean Heller is the author of the mystery-thrillers Handyman and Maximum Impact (Forge).

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