FATALITY AT BATH AND WELLS

Lively follow-up to a promising debut that introduced unlikely private investigator G.D.H. Pringle, a good, gray widower retired from Her Majesty's Tax Office, now vacationing in Bath with cozy widow/companion Mavis Bignall. The posh, new Bath and Wells TV studios are to be opened with fanfare and attending royalty; and Pringle, invited to do a brief interview about tax law, is on the scene when Christopher Gordon, newly installed program director, incompetent and hated by all, is stabbed to death in a jampacked, suddenly blacked-out studio. There, too, is producer Jonathan Powers, who'd met Pringle during his one successful detecting effort (The Trouble at Aquitaine) and now implores him to help get his friend and chief suspect Jack Kemp off the hook. Pringle questions everyone at the scene--crippled editor Dorothy Hammond; black artist Rudolph Asante; Malcomb Gordon, owner of the station and Christopher's uncle; assistant Hilary, once Christopher's lover; and a host of flaky others. Incidents, mostly violent, are plentiful along the way, but Pringle works his way to a rooted-in-the-past solution. Some well-aimed barbs at architects, union rules and pretentious phonies add to the fun. There's lots of that--it almost swallows up the plot and Pringle, too, but who's complaining?