A DARK DEVOTION

In a tale as bleak as the wintry Norfolk marshes, lawyer Alex O'Neil is asked to solve the disappearance of a former love's wife. It turns out that Grace Dearden wasn't quite the paragon she'd appeared to be. Her body surfaces, along with ugly revelations of affairs and shady land deals. Devotion owes a lot to Rebecca and even more to Harriet Walter's expert reading. She ably delineates several characters/suspects but is unable to make them particularly likeable or sympathetic. The predictable conclusion lies in the marshes, but one gets quite bogged down in subplots getting there. J.B.G. ©AudioFile, Portland, Maine [Published: DEC/JAN 99]