Stilled Life

By John Show

THE SECOND DEADLY SIN

by Lawrence Sanders

Putnam; 412 pages; $9.95

Covetousness, for those who don't sin or don't keep count, is the second deadly sin. Pride is the first, and lust is No. 3, though not necessarily in order of popularity. In Lawrence Sanders' new novel, these and most of the other numbered transgressions come into play as someone murders Painter Victor Maitland at his studio in Lower Manhattan.

Who stabbed Maitland? Apparently someone who knew him, because there was no sign of forced entry. To know Maitland was to loathe him; he was a foul-mouthed brawler, a womanizer, a raging egomaniac. But he was also a genius of the first order, the finest painter of female nudes since Matisse and Bonnard. In recent years his paintings have sold for up to $100,000, and presumably prices will rise after his death. Who covets the paintings, or the money?

The author gives the puzzle to retired Chief of Detectives Edward X. ("Iron Balls") Delaney, who spied out the sinner in Sanders' The First Deadly Sin. Delaney's feet are flat, but his intellect is fully arched; there is no doubt he will track down the killer. That certainty is the only real shortcoming of this amiable book, in which Delaney's adoring young wife leaves love notes for her husband in the refrigerator. What might have been a tense and chancy struggle between cop and criminal is, instead, merely an interesting log of police procedure as Delaney ambles ineluctably after the wrongdoer.

The author's paragraphs march slowly, but they march well. The suspects include mischievous caricatures from the New York art world--a guileful art dealer, a slithery lawyer, a glittering female collector of celebrities, a vacant former model who is Maitland's widow, and so on. All of these art lovers are very covetous indeed. The most appealing, though not necessarily the most villainous, is a brilliantly facile painter named Jake Dukker, who has profitably latched on to every new art fad in the past 20 years. Says someone of Dukker: "If the Hudson River School ever comes back into style, Jake will be sitting out there on the Palisades, painting the river and trees and clouds and Indians in canoes."

Jake Dukker is easy to detect as a likable fraud. But a likely candidate for the murder is more difficult to find. The vote here was for Delaney's cute wife, but it was wrong.

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