Witching Murder

Charmian Daniels (last seen in Murder in the Garden ), chief metropolitan police superintendent of Central London, interrupts a medical leave when beautiful Vivien Charles, member of a witches' coven, is found fatally stabbed in her home, her corpse surrounded by cult objects. An autopsy reveals that Vivien was pregnant and the fetus deformed. Vivien's fellow witches, still reeling from the shock of her death, are dumbfounded by the finding, but sexy Joshua Fox, the lone male in the coven and laughingly called its warlock, is unsurprised. When Charmian learns that the primary duty of a warlock is to impregnate witches, the hapless man becomes the prime suspect--until he, too, is stabbed in his home. Every clue leads to the coven, but Charmian is unconvinced, and digs into Vivien's past to discover a more pedestrian kind of sorcery that might conjure up a killer. Melville's breezy style is less than spellbinding, but she serves up a balanced brew of career politics, the occult and the psychology of murder. (Aug.)