A BRACE OF SKEET

The author's master gunsmith--sometime-sleuth Keith Calder (Pursuit of Arms, etc.), based outside Edinburgh--is vacationing abroad, leaving his able assistant, daughter Deborah, to narrate the latest episode in this series. Her vision of some peaceful leisure time is put aside when Herbert Tullos--grouchy, middle-aged steward-coach at the skeet-shooting Pentland Gun Club--is found dead outside his little house there. Called in as a consultant, Deborah instructs the police in the rules and regulations of skeet-shooting, along with a mass of information about the guns and other equipment used. They're busy meanwhile talking to possible witnesses in a seemingly motiveless crime--some of them from the condo development next door, which wants to buy the club property. Deborah takes over Tullos's job temporarily, at the club's request, and tries to make sense of things on her own while enjoying a slowly intensifying friendship with attractive Sergeant Fellowes. It turns out that the reasons for Tullos's murder lie deep in the past, but Deborah's accurate deductions make her another target for a ruthless killer in the tense final chapter. There's little tension elsewhere in this lore-heavy extended lecture of a novel, however, as the author regales the reader with stupefying details of bores, threads, cartridges, clay pigeons, chokes, trap-houses, etc., etc. A treasure for this hobby's aficionados; a test of endurance for others.