SHADOW PLAY

By Iris Johansen St. Martin’s, 336 pages, $32.50

Iris Johansen’s 19 books featuring Eve Duncan, America’s ace forensic sculptor, helped Iris buy herself an $8.5-million mansion in suburban Atlanta. What makes the Duncan books such hot sellers? Partly it’s Duncan’s phenomenal talent at reconstructing murdered people’s likenesses from their battered remains. The rest is either her authentic ability to communicate with the dead or a work ethic that’s so fanatical she’s convinced the dead have slipped her tips on murder cases.

In Shadow Play, Duncan applies herself to the case of a murdered California girl whose skull is found after eight years in the ground. As usual, the action often tests the reader’s suspension of disbelief, but Johansen never allows the pace of her storytelling to miss a beat.

Jack Batten’s Whodunit column appears every other

weekend.