MURDER! MURDER! BURNING BRIGHT

Delictos don't get any more flagrante than in Castle Caldbeck Wildlife Park, where animal keeper Henry Fowler and veterinary secretary Harriet Stoner have been discovered in the boot of Fowler's car, partly undressed, tangled in each other's limbs, and very, very dead. Cherchez l'homme, think Supt. George Rogers (None the Worse for a Hanging, 1995, etc.) and his foppish second-in-command, Chief Inspector David Lingard. But that's where things get complicated, since the obvious suspect, Harriet's husband Laurence Stoner, is serving a three-year hitch in Hardenhuish Open Prison for building fraud, and his hulking stepbrother William, with whom Harriet's been demurely living, disclaims the slightest sexual interest in her or her possible lovers. That leaves the lovers themselves—Harriet's tearful boss, veterinary surgeon Jacques Latouche; trainee animal keeper Quentin Coope; and, it could be, every other red-blooded Caldbeck man enterprising Harriet set her cap for—even though most of them get only a single scene apiece to make an impression. Under the circumstances, it's only natural that both Rogers (temporarily bereft of the favors of an attractive naval widow) and Lingard (never one to resist a likely beauty) should fall under the amorous spell of the park's chief security officer, Lesley Wing. Birds do it, bees do it, but maybe a few too many human predators stand revealed by the final fadeout in Rogers's 20th outing.