Delete queries fail unexplainably

[MLH]

Take the following SQL:
DELETE tblPreliminaryV INs.*
FROM tblPreliminaryV INs INNER JOIN tblVehicleJobs ON
tblPreliminaryV INs.PVIN = tblVehicleJobs. SerialNum;

Access 97 consistently disallows me to run queries of this
nature. I'm the database owner and the owner of all its
objects and have full admin rights to them all.

I have absolutely zero problems running
DELETE tblPreliminaryV INs.*
FROM tblPreliminaryV INs;
which deletes ALL the records from the table.

But if I try selectively deleting records in tblPreliminaryV INs that
have related records in tblVehicleJobs, A97 gives me a bunch
of - well, to put it truthfully, bullshit errors saying the database
may have been opened in ReadOnly mode or I'm on a network
that doesn't permit me such access - along with more garbage
error conditions that are completely off the mark.

[MLH]

My apologies - I found my earlier post on this topic. Rich P
<rp*****@aol.co manswered and provided the working solution.

DELETE * FROM tblPreliminaryV INs Where PVIN In (Select SerialNum From
tblVehicleJobs) ;

I am puzzled, though, as to why A97 doesn't run the following SQL:
DELETE tblPreliminaryV INs.*
FROM tblPreliminaryV INs INNER JOIN tblVehicleJobs ON
tblPreliminaryV INs.PVIN = tblVehicleJobs. SerialNum;
Is it just bad code on my part?