LET US PREY

Gun-and-game expert Keith Calder's newest exploit is shared by kindly, middle-aged solicitor Ralph Enterkin (Sauce for the Pigeon, 1985, etc.), who narrates the story. Enterkin's engaged to protect the rights of landowner Alec Deeling, whose gamekeeper Jim Broxburn has died, possibly as a result of setting out poison for predator hawks—against the law in the Scottish Highlands. But Calder, a friend and neighbor of Deeling's, soon finds other possibilities: Broxburn's affair with nearby Celia Farrow—married to a short- tempered deer-farmer; malicious bird-protectionist Mrs. Chegwin; the dead man's unexpectedly large legacy; some odd doings at a neighboring falconer's. Enterkin, mostly sedentary, undergoes a wrenching physical ordeal before he and Calder figure out the muddled plot. Amiable and gently humorous, but readers not into guns and birds may be dropouts before it's all over.