Parson's Pleasure

Doran Fairweather's second caper (after Malice Domestic takes her to Warwickshire to track down the theft of priceless antiques from a rather eccentric elderly member of the aristocracy, Lady Timberlake. What starts off as a working holiday with her boyfriend, the prudish Rodney Chelmarsh, quickly turns serious when one of the leads Fairweather is investigating, a gypsy antiques dealer, is brutally murdered. Chelmarsh is the first to realize that Fairweather's own life may be in jeopardy. Hardwick has managed to breathe fresh life into this fairly conventional mystery. Everything is vaguely familiar, from the cast of dotty characters to the locale, but this only adds to the book's charm. (August)