THE JURY IS EXCUSED by Wayne P. Libhart, self-published, 346 pages, $14.95.

This is an engaging mystery set in Southwest Harbor and on Mount Desert Island. It’s a murder and a romance, and it’s all told in a low-key first-person style that is deceptively rambling.

The plot involves a young attorney, Ian Campbell, trying his first murder case, and young Kara Bartlett, who is studying for the law and becomes his paralegal — and the love of his life.

Well-flavored with familiar glimpses of Mount Desert scenery and life, the book opens with newly minted lawyer Ian taking on two cases — one a seemingly simple summons charging an old high school friend, Jack Kelley, with molesting the lobster gear of another fisherman. The second is a court-assigned defense of a woman charged with possession of marijuana. The beautiful woman is Kara who is charged because she was wearing a borrowed sweat shirt which has a trace of the drug in a pocket.

Of course, Kara’s case is soon dropped but — as Ian discovers — because of the intercession of a Cumberland County district attorney named Dave Crocker.

Through some smart trial work, Ian gets the lobster-molesting charge against his friend dismissed, but then the man who made the charge, Tony Anthony, turns up dead — murdered.

In short order, Jack is arrested for the murder; Anthony, it turns out, has been involved with Jack’s wife, Ann, and has turned her on to drugs. Jack had threatened to kill Anthony after giving him a public beating.

Libhart carries us through the preliminaries of the murder case, the investigation that takes place as he tries to sort out what happened and who did kill the lobsterman who, it turns out, is suspected of having mob ties.

As he prepares for the trial, Ian falls more and more in love with Kara, and that love is reciprocated.

Libhart paints an interesting picture of how a young lawyer prepares for trial. While he is overly dependent on dialogue, he has a light touch and it carries us along. He even makes jury selection interesting.

The evidence slowly mounts up against Jack, whose wife and children have disappeared. The plot picks up steam as Ian’s team turns up a drug connection.

Libhart paints some stark characters in police uniforms — a state trooper, Sgt. Tobin, who comes across as a not very bright bully and, by contrast, a local cop named Pete Janes, another friend from high school. Janes is painted as a “straight arrow” single-minded in his pursuit of villainy.

The author provides a seasoned attorney as a mentor for Ian — Dan Hardy, who was the protagonist of his first novel, “The Jury Is Out,” published in 1996.

The action picks up as the trial starts and eventually reaches a smashing climax.

Throughout the book, Libhart brings us a clear understanding of the law and the intricacies of legal practice in the small-town reaches of Maine. He also slips in some nifty if derogatory comments about the writing of best-selling author John Grisham — as Ian muses that “Grisham writes well but I find it hard to believe most of his stories.” And later Ian says, “With lawyers like him writing novels like `The Runaway Jury’ it’s no wonder the public doesn’t have a clue as to what really goes on in court during a trial.”

Libhart, a Seal Cove resident who retired from the practice of law in 1993 and has served as a Maine legislator, succeeds in presenting a character in the heroic mold as well as a love story that sadly would be regarded by many today as old-fashioned in its upholding of virtue. It is certainly a pleasant contrast with the wrestling matches that pass for love in today’s society.

Bill Roach is a free-lance writer with Maine roots who now lives in Florida.