EXHAUSTIVE ENQUIRIES

Another unabashedly retro adventure for Agatha Christie-wannabe Melissa Craig (Over the Edge, 1993, etc.), who agrees to write a mystery farce for the Stowbridge Players to perform at Heyshill Manor, the hotel recently acquired by blowhard millionaire Richard Mitchell. Rich Mitch is besieged by the contending forces of Dittany Blair, a librarian who plays the heroine in Melissa's play, and the Hon. Penelope de Lavier, of the Dizzy Heights boutiques. But the murder of Mitch's old mate Will Foley leads Melissa far afield from Mitch's romances, though closer to her own romantic interest, Chief Inspector Ken Harris, who keeps warning her to quit investigating the evidence that places art-theft ring in Heyshill Manor. The inspector would sleep better if he realized that he was in the kind of book in which nothing really happens to the heroine. The stock characters are dusted off and put through their paces (archly civil spats, midnight searches, endless cups of tea) amiably enough until the unmasking of the hilariously unconvincing villain. By and large, though, it's all as soothing as a nice game of Clue.