THE DEATH-CAP DANCERS

Hermione Lestrange--whose great-aunt is Mitchell's longtime psychiatrist-sleuth Dame Beatrice Adela Lestrange Bradley--is vacationing with three friends in a Yorkshire forest cottage when dire doings begin to accumulate. A hitchhiker pays the girls unwanted attentions. An escaped convict is on the loose. And then the girls discover, near her crushed bicycle, the body of Judy Tyne--who's only the first of three folk-dance troupe members in the area to be savagely attacked. Enter, then, in answer to Hermione's call: Dame Beatrice, who gives the local inspector some much-needed help and very quickly pinpoints the murderer. How she accomplishes this, however, is left almost as murky as the killer's motivation. And only occasional touches of wit or vivid description rescue Mitchell's 59th Dame Beatrice mystery--just barely--from unmitigated boredom.