Death in Still Waters.(Brief Article)

Barbara Lee. St. Martin's/Dunne, $20.95 (240p) ISBN 0-312-13048-1

Winner of the publisher's 1994 Malice Domestic competition for best first mystery, this unevenly effective tale introduces 40-year-old Eve Elliott, a New York advertising whiz gone stale, whose doubledecade marriage is kaput. While visiting her beloved aunt in coastal Maryland, Eve is walking by a waterside bungalow when she observes a local man, Will St. Claire, discover that his old dog has drowned, a plastic yellow rope tight around its neck. The next day she finds the bungalow's elderly owner drowned in the same place, his own dogs locked in the house. The police label the …