HIGH COUNTRY FALL

The problem with owning a fancy house on the edge of a mountain is the danger of tumbling down the side.

Taking a breather from the hoopla surrounding her engagement to Deputy Sheriff Dwight Bryant, Deborah Knott scoots over to the exquisitely preserved (some would say preciously folksified) North Carolina mountain town of Cedar Gap to fill in for a vacationing judge, bunking for the week with her college-age twin cousins May and June, who have opted out of school to open a restaurant there. In Deborah’s first case, their pal Danny is charged with killing their partner Carla Ledwig’s dad, who disapproved of his daughter’s marriage. Did Danny whack the gerontologist with a hammer and push him over the terrace, or had Dr. Ledwig fatally alienated Simon Proffitt, owner of the town’s déclassé tourist trap, the Trading Post? Come to mention it, Ledwig had recently argued with crusty developer Billy Ed, 75, and he was on the outs with his forgetful longtime best friend Norman Osborne too. But the culprit can’t be Norman, who’s exonerated when he’s whacked and dumped over the terrace at a fiddlin’ party at Billy and Joyce Ashe’s.

A shade too much gooey romantic stuff, but like all the other members of the Knott tribe (Slow Dollar, 2002, etc.), those twins are irrepressible, and Deborah is nearly as good at bluegrass jamming as at judging.