puzzler. The settings are evoked beautifully, and Oscar Wilde can stop by for a few minutes at a party for a realistic touch. In The Detling Secret the Irish troubles are festering, there's a clever swindler from America, and a strong-minded young woman of a good family insists on marrying a man with a mysterious past. She is also a do-gooder who, in trying to help downtrodden women, winds up with a street urchin as a servant. The maid says things such as "My mum said you must never let a man interfere with you, and if you did you had a baby." When her blunt-spoken mistress explains the facts of life, the maid says, "Well, I never. You mean you got to go through all that before you get a baby? I seen those things on my brothers, but I never knew what they was for." All the characters come together at a Christmas party in the country where there is a murder that looks like an accident. Readers of this superior fiction will have a grand time guessing the Detling secret. (Viking, $14.75)
Your Reaction
