About the Author

John Mortimer is a playwright, novelist, and former practicing barrister who has written many film scripts as well as stage, radio, and television plays, the Rumpole plays, for which he received the British Academy Writer of the Year Award, and the adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's "Brideshead Revisited." He is the author of twelve collections of Rumpole stories and three acclaimed volumes of autobiography.

Reviews

The advertisement that Molly Pargenter answered made the Tuscany villa to let sound like the ideal placesuspiciously too idealfor her family to spend its summer vacation. Arriving in Italy with her husband, three daughters, and father, she finds an unusual assortment of locals and English expatriates for neighbors, as well as detailed notes on the proper use of the house left by her absentee landlord, one S. Kettering. Molly's obsession with learning as much as possible about the Kettering household leads her to some ominous conclusions. Mortimer (author of Rumpole of the Bailey and a writer for the television series Brideshead Revisted ) has blended elements of social satire and mystery into an entertaining story whose atmosphere of mounting tension culminates in a disturbing climax. Lonnie Beene, West Texas State Univ. Lib., Canyon

Waughesque without the malice but no less clear-eyed for its good humor, Mortimer's comic vision extends beyond the English settings of Rumpole and Paradise Postponed to a Tuscany domesticated into a backdrop for British holiday-makers and other escapees. Bossily capable Molly Pargeter, indulging her abiding passion for Italian Renaissance art, carts her reluctant familystuffy solicitor husband, Hugh, and three daughters ranging from teenager to toddlerto the villa La Felicita, which belongs to a mysteriously authoritarian absentee landlord and art lover, S. Kettering. Molly's resplendently outrageous father, aging roue and Fleet Street hack Haverford Downs, inveigles his way into joining and then roguishly discomfits the Pargeters, furnishing the novel with one of Mortimer's most bravura performances. Molly's other passion, amateur sleuthing, leads her in quest of the elusive landlord, after a murder and Haverford's rediscovery of an old flame, who now presides over a magnificent palazzo. Although the momentum falters slightly midway, Mortimer's seemingly effortless command of his craft makes this combination of well plotted mystery and lightly barbed comedy a compelling pleasure. 35,000 first printing; $35,000 ad/promo; first serial to House & Garden; BOMC alternate. (July)