cover image Cotswold Mistress

Cotswold Mistress

Michael Spicer. St. Martin's Press, $16.95 (159pp) ISBN 978-0-312-07683-2

In a third mystery featuring British secret agent Lady Jane Hildreth (after Cotswold Murders ), eccentric American aircraft designer Marvin Lockhart arouses the suspicion of MI5 when two scientists who had viewed his newest military jet on his rented Cotswold estate subsequently die by suicide and heart attack. Lady Jane follows orders to renew her passing acquaintance with Lockhart, but the mysterious millionaire vanishes after his prototypical jet explodes at a Royal Air Force base. The glamorous agent then flies off to Florida, ostensibly on a vacation with her lover but in reality to pursue the seductive Lucille Fraser, mistress to both Lockhart and defense ministry official Sir Anthony Dean, who had drawn Lady Jane's attention to the premature demise of 20 British scientists during the 1980s in a case known as ``the Star Wars deaths.'' The heroine's doubts about her personal relationship intermingle with the mystery; both are resolved in an ambivalent, bittersweet denouement worthy of this above-average caper. ( June )