Few men have proved as disappointing as Edward VIII, later the Duke of Windsor. From a romantic high point—his 1936 abdication from England's throne "to marry the woman I love"—the Duke descended to reign feebly over a petty and pathetic realm of titled ne'er-do-wells and social climbers. Worse: weak-willed and none too intelligent, he frivolously, if inadvertently, allowed himself to become a Nazi pawn, flirting with Hitler while ostensibly backing a "negotiated peace." Small wonder that in 1940 he was shipped out to the Bahamas, which is where this real-life mystery begins.
On July 8, 1943, before dawn in Nassau, the crass Sir Harry Oakes, a Canadian gold tycoon, was murdered in his bed. Told of the crime, the Duke, by then the Bahamas' Governor, behaved with typical backbone: He shut the door and stayed in his bedroom. Soon, though, Oakes's abrasive son-in-law, farmer-businessman Count Alfred de Marigny, stood accused—framed, he here charges—with the complicity of the Duke, whom the Count had once called "a pimple on the face of the British Empire."
Little evidence connected de Marigny with the four wounds in Oakes's head—wounds Bahamian police never tied to a murder weapon. Fingerprint analysis was delegated to two detectives from Miami, who botched the job. Still, de Marigny was placed on trial.
Though he was acquitted, the languid Count (according to one press account, he spent much of the trial picking his teeth) found his life effectively wrecked. The jurors qualified his freedom: He must leave the Bahamas. For years de Marigny bounced from country to country, finding refuge in the U.S. in 1947. Along the odyssey, he broke up with his wife, who had stuck by him during the trial.
There is a smoky, almost dreamlike quality to this book that befits both the decadent setting and the faded memories of the author, now an octogenarian. He told this story in 1946 in an apparently spicier volume, More Devil Than Saint. This time, though, he names Oakes's killer: Harold Christie, a real estate promoter who was, the Count charges, part of a money-laundering ring that included Oakes, the Duke and reputed Nazi agent Axel Wenner-Gren.
Fair enough. Nobody's come up with a more plausible suspect. More interesting, yes—a 1972 book by Marshall Houts traced Sir Harry's death to mob financial genius Meyer Lansky—but not more plausible. (Crown, $19.95)
by Luanne Rice
This novel starts out promisingly: Maria Dark, famous archaeologist, leaves her glamorous Italian husband to return to the puritanical Connecticut town where she was raised. Almost immediately Maria senses that something is wrong. Her sister Sophie has grown fat and paranoid; she's jumpy; she lies; she steals.
But when Maria confronts her mother—the snobbish Hallie—about Sophie, Hallie denies noticing anything. So does Peter, Sophie and Maria's brother. Only Nell, Peter's wife and Maria's best friend, shares Maria's concern. Is something rotten in Hatuquitit, or is Maria's judgment clouded by envy of her sister's seemingly idyllic marriage? Or is Maria simply out of it, having been so immersed in studying ancient cultures that she can't understand the ways of provincial American people?
Stone Heart would be more interesting if it explored these questions and a middle-aged woman's ambivalence about going home again. Instead, it becomes a quasi-suspense novel about domestic violence and child abuse, "as alarming as front-page headlines," says the book-jacket hype.
Yes, Sophie and Gordon's relationship is perverse, and yes, the conclusion is shocking, but the most alarming thing about this book is that Rice relies on obvious situations and cardboard characters. Hallie is a stereotypical distant mother; Duncan, the hometown boy with whom Maria has an affair, is a standard-issue New England sailor, rough-hewn but sweet; Nell is the saintly Melanie Wilkes of Gone with the Wind transplanted to Connecticut. Gordon, Maria discovers, is a wife beater because he was abused as a child. When Sophie is finally jailed for killing him, she becomes a cause célèbre for feminists. All this is straight off the front pages, all right, but Rice hasn't made it much of a novel.
Rice, author of Crazy in Love, writes woodenly ("What she would say to Sophie she didn't know") and in clichés ("His message confused Maria and sent a chill down her spine"). She spends too much time describing what characters are feeling and too little showing it.
A subplot—Maria finds a murdered Indian squaw's remains—seems intended as a counterpoint to the Dark family's travails, but it too seems contrived. Rice probably meant to explore abusive relationships and "normal" people turning out to be monsters, but here again she doesn't add any insight. We can learn as much from the daily paper. (Viking, $19.95)
by Robert B. Parker
Even the best hitters slump. Wade Boggs has struggled this season; so has Don Mat-tingly. Why should writers be any different?
Parker introduced Spenser, his wisecracking Boston gumshoe, in 1974, and in the mid-'70s Parker produced one solid hit after another, with an occasional home run. But Spenser went into a funk in the mid-'80s, and the series veered dangerously off-track. Last year's Playmates showed Parker regaining his form, and he almost seemed like his old self last fall, when he published his splendid "collaboration" with Raymond Chandler. Poodle Springs. Now comes Stardust. While not quite a four-bagger, it at least qualifies as a stand-up triple.
Spenser's latest job is guarding Jill Joyce, nee Jillian Zabriskie, star of Fifty Minutes, a TV show about a psychotherapist. Joyce is being subjected to an anonymous harassment campaign, which ends in the murder of the actor's stunt double.
A San Andreas Fault of split personalities, Jill is one of Parker's most vivid creations. On the small screen, she is "America's honeybun.... She looked like orange juice and fresh laundry, the perfect date for the Williams-Amherst game, in a plaid skirt, picnicking beforehand on a blanket." In reality, Jill is nothing but trouble—a spoiled, egocentric, alcoholic nymphomaniac. Of course, she is more than just an assignment for Spenser; she is a reclamation project. With the aid of his lady love, Susan Silverman, and the ever-so-suave Hawk, Spenser sets out to solve the mystery and save a troubled soul while he's at it.
Parker's subject matter gives him a chance to take a few jabs at the world of television, which he entered as consultant-writer on the 1985-88 ABC series starring Robert Urich. Spenser: For Hire. Seeing a TV show being filmed, says Spenser, is "like watching ice melt"; in case we missed the point, we are told 10 pages later that the experience is "like watching dandruff form."
Even though Stardust is the best Spenser novel in years, it has its faults. With 16 Spensers behind him, Parker has to be careful not to repeat himself. When Spenser was described as "dressed to the nines and armed to the teeth" in his last adventure, it was funny; when the exact same description appears in Stardust, it is redundant. A further irritation is a denouement in which a key aspect of the plot is left unexplained.
Quibbles aside, Parker is clearly having fun again. He even laughs at himself: "I felt like I was trapped in a Hemingway short story," says Spenser. "If I got any more cryptic, I wouldn't be able to talk at all." Welcome back, slugger. (Putnam, $18.95)
by Loren D. Estleman
Estleman is a lesser-known but equally adept practitioner of the same craft as Parker, having built a successful series around that hardy perennial of mystery fiction, the hard-boiled detective. Estleman's gritty gumshoe is Amos Walker, who has less of a personal life than Spenser but is every bit as quick with a quip or wry observation. Walker's turf is Detroit, whose mean streets somehow seem better suited to the genre than those of Spenser's Boston.
This is Walker's 10th outing. Unlike Parker and his bare-bones plotting, Estleman weaves intricate story lines. Here Walker is hired as a bagman (or so he thinks) by Gail Hope, an ex-screen sexpot in such movies as Beach Blowout and V-8 Vampires. "They tell me you've got guts for rent," says Gail. (People don't really talk like that, but it makes for fun reading.) Soon Walker is mixed up with his ex-wife and caught between a pair of government operatives intent on doing each other in.
When the plot gets too complicated—which it does—the reader is advised to lean back and savor the language. Money is called "tall cotton" or "long folding." There's a simile for every occasion: "They'd track me down like a pencil in a drawer," frets one character. "By day," Walker says of a dingy nightclub, "it all seemed kind of tired, like a trick-or-treater on November first." And a hospital corridor has "linoleum as tough as a night nurse."
After a particularly productive morning of sleuthing, Walker rewards himself with a big lunch at a seafood restaurant. "The business has its days," he muses. "It's the years you want to watch out for."
Well, Loren, the reviewing business has its days too, and this novel, my friend, generated one of the most enjoyable. (Houghton Mifflin, $18.95)
>SPARTINA A boat and a fishing-crazed monomaniac usually make for a mesmerizing story, and John Casey's realistic Rhode Island novel is more than a good one (it won 1989's National Book Award for fiction). (Avon)
A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME
For those into other kinds of power—cosmic, for instance—this best-seller by British physicist Stephen Hawking offers a big bang, among other inscrutable theories. (Bantam)
IT'S ALWAYS SOMETHING The feisty, good-natured spirit that defined Gilda Radner's comedy underscores this moving account of her battle against ovarian cancer: "Like my life," she writes, "this book is about not knowing, having to change...and making the best of it." (Avon)
- Contributors:
- Susan Toepfer,
- Sara Nelson,
- Mark Donovan.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
