DEADLOCKED

Quite a tableau for Dr. Arthur King's Cambridgeshire neighbors: the researcher impaled on a bronze sword, stretched out on the floor of a windowed room securely locked from the inside. Was King's murderer the animal-rights activist who'd sent him threatening letters, or one of the colleagues at his own lab, or a member of the Arthurian circle he was so besotted with? And how did the killer get in and out of the murder room without leaving a trace, despite the state-of-the-art security system King had installed? Keep your eye on the stalwart members of Chief Inspector Sidney James's Serious Crimes team; they're much more interesting than the muffled suspects anyway. A high-tech locked-room puzzle very much in the mold of Death of a Merry Widow (1995)--with most of the strengths and weaknesses of its Golden Age originals.