ROYAL CAT

Murder comes, just barely, to the Authentic Elizabethan Spring Faire in Empty Creek, Ariz., when somebody ends Carolyn Lewis's reign as Queen Elizabeth with a bare bodkin and catapults bookseller Penelope Warren (the paperback Desert Cat) into her place. Follows a halfpenny's worth of mystery to an intolerable deal of naughty tomfoolery, replete with alarums, excursions, pillories, chastity belts, melons, tomatoes, and assorted lesser bosoms, all heaving like gangbusters in and out of Elizabethan dress. A decorously giddy costume romp strictly for the like- minded.