"The police," said Susan Lyne to her sister, "seem to be taking an interest in your undesirable neighbors."

"Quite time, too." Fiona Laslett joined her at the window and watched the policeman talking to the man from the cottage at the corner.

But the police weren't interested in the neighbors, at least not yet. They were only inquiring casually about the python that had strayed from nearby Bright's Farm where the Riscoes, authors, which excused any eccentricity, kept a monkey, an eagle owl, a goshawk, and a peregrine falcon. The police would return when the body of the blonde girl from the cottage was found in a patch of brambles. With them would come Conrad, young reporter for the local paper, and then Susan's lost love and his new wife would move into the cottage on the lane.

The murder launches the reader into a classical puzzle with an ingenious mystery involving real and likable people. The problems of training the falcon and the goshawk are important, and so are the trusting python and the wry and charming love story.