SOLD TO MISS SEETON

A crime wave in Miss Emily Seeton's placid corner of Kent? Well, the police are after a criminal who escaped when the clock had almost run out on his sentence; an obscure professor has been killed in his house without apparent motive or heirs; a young man spooning with his girl outside Candell & Inchpin, Antiques, passes brutally into history himself; and still another corpse turns up in Miss Seeton's sitting room. What could all this have to do with a Georgian chest Miss Seeton's accidentally purchased at auction--and taken an unconscionably long time to open before revealing a treasure trove that could light the way to a long-lost dukedom? The answer, sadly, is: Not as much as you might hope. So although this entry in the long-running series (Miss Seeton Rules, 1994, etc.) has more mystification and less pottering about the village than usual, you'd need a Ouija board to put together the pieces before, or even after, Miss Seeton.