Now Ms. Viets is forging a new career as a mystery writer. This is the third installment in her Francesca Vierling series, featuring a heroine who, coincidentally, writes a human interest column for the fictional St. Louis City Gazette. As a St. Louisan, it pains me to report that Ms. Viets is a much better columnist than novelist. While the series has its charms, it's by no means flawless.

Francesca Vierling, "six feet tall, with dark hair, dark eyes and a smart mouth," depends on tips from loyal readers to feed her ideas for her columns. So she is eager to follow up on a phone call from Margie, a fellow South City resident who invites her to observe "forking," the latest city fad. Apparently forking literally means sticking hundreds of plastic forks, tine first, into the lawn.

When Francesca arrives at Margie's house on North Dakota Place to witness this spectacle, she realizes she is in the midst of a street that is inhabited by serious rehabbers -- hardy pioneers who buy run-down old homes so they can spend their time and money restoring them to their former grandeur. While Margie and her two friends are busy forking a neighbor's lawn as a practical joke, Francesca meets Caroline, the Queen Bee of the rehabbers. Caroline's tireless efforts and strong personality have helped revitalize North Dakota Place. However, some of the neighbors have protested that she is too controlling, and that her strong-armed tactics aimed at forcing the neighbors to clean up their homes border on blackmail.

When an old man who was painting his house purple in defiance of Caroline is electrocuted, Francesca wonders if his death is truly an accident. Suddenly death becomes almost a daily occurrence on North Dakota Place. Francesca is sure she knows the link between the murder victims, but the police won't listen to her theory. Then the identity of the fourth murder victim invalidates Francesca's suspicions. She now has to re-think her theory before North Dakota Place becomes a ghost town. In the meantime, she is also attempting to preserve her work life and her love life. The Gazette is populated by clueless editors and backstabbing co-workers, while her marriage-minded boyfriend won't take no for an answer.

Elaine Viets' strengths as a novelist are the same attributes that made her a good newspaper columnist. She has a knack for identifying and appreciating the local habits and landmarks that give St. Louis its charm. You can tell she knows the city and the newspaper business. If you're a resident, you can amuse yourself by trying to determine the identity of the real-life Post-Dispatch staff members whom she has modeled her dysfunctional Gazette staff after. It's a mystery within a mystery for St. Louisans.

Unfortunately, Viets still writes like a journalist. While that means she has some writing talent, she tends to fully describe each character as we meet them (isn't the first lesson of journalism school "put the important information in the first paragraph?") instead of gradually letting the reader get to know them. There's much more telling than showing. The mystery is not terribly sophisticated; any astute reader who thinks about clues and motives for a few minutes will be miles ahead of Francesca.

If you're a St. Louis native, you will get a kick out of this book. Everyone else will likely be less than enthralled, unless they enjoy reading an accurate, offbeat description of a City and its quirks.

And by the way, in case you're wondering -- I've been in St. Louis for 7 years and I've never heard of forking!

--Susan Scribner