Murder, My Deer

Kate Jasper and her crew of Marin County's most lovable loonies are back (after 1999's Murder on the Astral Plane), which is good news for the many fans of this sort of shrewd, zany mystery romp. Kate, who runs a business called Jest Gifts when she's not solving crimes, has just married her live-in lover, restaurant and art gallery owner Wayne Caruso, at the Marin county clerk's office, but she hasn't yet told anyone--especially not her obnoxious family. Imagine Kate's chagrin when Felix Byrne, an equally unpleasant reporter friend, shows up at a meeting of the Deerly Abused, a group of local residents keen to control the deer that munch their gardens. Felix has learned about the secret wedding, but he stumbles (literally) into a bigger story when one member of this group--who advocates blasting the doe-eyed predators with Claymore mines--is discovered dead from a crushed skull. Suspects abound: a former actress who wraps herself in layers of clothes to ward off attention; a plastic surgeon with a roving eye; an heiress with a support-group fetish; an eccentric black British postmistress; a slick Asian chef and television star--the whole Agatha Christie crew, as it were, transplanted to Girdner's fictional town of Abierto. When the local police chief turns out to be an addled elder who sings ""I Feel Pretty"" during interrogations, it's up to Kate to dig out everybody's hidden connections to the dead man. If this is your kind of thing, Girdner does it as deftly as anyone. (Mar.)