AIDING AND ABETTING

Oh, what a sly, darkly funny, and strange story Dame Muriel Spark has concocted in this slender novel. In 1974, British Lord Lucan disappeared from England after purportedly murdering his children's nanny in an attempt to kill his wife. This much is fact. Now the fiction: In 1994, European psychiatrist Hildegard Wolf is intrigued by two new patients, who both claim to be Lord Lucan. Who is the real one, and who is Dr. Wolf, who evidently has also abandoned a previous life? Davina Porter handles the plot digressions and Spark's famously elliptical writing with ease. She always succeeds in keeping us entertained and mostly succeeds in not losing us through the plot twists. Every so often, a character's accent slips and merges into another's, but that's a minor quibble. A 'Spark'ling listen. A.C.S. (c) AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine [Published: JUN/JUL 02]