MURDER AT THE NATIONAL GALLERY

When a music critic reported after a recital that Margaret Truman couldn't sing very well, her father, the sitting president, wrote to him: "Someday I hope to meet you. When that happens, you'll need a new nose, a lot of beefsteak for black eyes, and perhaps a supporter below!" Thus, it is painful to report that as a writer she should have stuck to singing. In this effort, about a long lost Caravaggio, Richard Poe does not rise above the material. All his European characters, cultured or criminal, Italian or French, sound alike, and all sound like Americans putting on accents for a spaghetti commercial. But then, they were all written that way. B.G. © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine [Published: AUG/ SEP 01]