A trio of new mystery, suspense novels

Our Fathers' Lies, by Andrew Taylor. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co. 234 pp. $15.95. Taylor's first novel, ``Caroline Minuscule,'' won the John Creasey Memorial Award for the best first novel by a British writer in 1982 and introduced William Dougal, Taylor's attractive, amoral, and somewhat mysterious young hero. In ``Our Fathers' Lies,'' Taylor's third novel, Dougal joins his father, a retired British intelligence agent, and his former girlfriend, Celia, in investigating the mysterious circumstances surrounding the presumed suicide of Celia's father, a historian. Celia and the Dougals

find their own lives in danger when they uncover an old murder and a World War I court-martial in this well-written mystery novel. The Deer Leap, by Martha Grimes. Boston: Little, Brown & Co. 236 pp. $15.95.

Grimes brings her usual sensitive touch to her seventh mystery novel. Superintendent Richard Jury of Scotland Yard and his friend, Melrose Plant, the former Earl of Caverness, are summoned to a small English village by their old friend, mystery writer Polly Praed. Two dogs, one cat, and two women have died accidentally. Or were they murdered? In the course of the investigation, Jury meets the cast of village eccentrics -- an amnesiac 25-year-old rescuer of stray pets and her nine-year-old accomplice; a dotty baroness; a handsome veterinarian; a cranky constable -- and has a romance with a pretty young woman. The Secret Generations, by John Gardner. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. 383 pp. $17.95.

Gardner, who revived the James Bond series of novels, combines espionage fiction with a family saga and does justice to both in ``The Secret Generations.'' This absorbing novel recounts the history of the British Secret Service from 1909 through 1918 (with an epilogue set in 1935) through the lives of the members of a fictional family, the aristocratic Railtons. Manipulative Giles Railton recruits members of his family for a British spy network that stretches from Ireland to Germany and into Russia. The

events of World War I provide the impetus for establishing the Secret Service and dramatically affect the lives of every member of the family.