DEATH AT KING ARTHUR’S COURT

A locked-room puzzle centering on a corpse barricaded in an RV.

Warren Morgan, who feared someone was out to get him, was clearly right. Some person or persons unknown got into his Winnebago and then out of it, leaving its locks and armor-plating intact but not its owner’s body. Children’s author Lyon Wentworth (Death in the Secret Garden, 2005, etc.) wonders if he’s the killer. After all, his friend Morgan’s van was parked in his driveway on Nutmeg Hill, and he too was covered in blood. His only memory is of a cowled figure knocking him unconscious with an ancient sword. Murphysville Police Chief Rocco Herbert is set to arrest him when Lyon’s wife, Connecticut State Senator Bea Wentworth, confesses to the crime. Of course, they’re both wrong, and they promptly set out to unlock the mystery, which will be complicated by doomsday letters from the Brotherhood of Beelzebub, collegiate infighting by two professors warring for Morgan’s chair and Morgan’s half-brother Clay and his twin Rina, who were trying to wrest control of their trust fund from him. While Clay dallies with the tootsie Bambi and Rina bemoans the plight of unprotected eagles, a bomb is placed in Bea’s car, and Lyon discovers his liquor cabinet has been tinkered with.

Too many red herrings, some of them downright silly, quickly deflate the plot, which is airborne only when Lyon sets sail in his balloon.