Aiding and Abetting - Muriel Spark

Dame Muriel Spark is a tart, witty writer (you probably know her as the creator of "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie") and this is her flight of fancy in answer to the mystery of what became of Lord Lucan.

When I read the blurb inside the cover, I did so in disbelief - how could so much happen in such a small book? Oh but it does, with shady characters pursuing each other from Paris to Africa via London and a Scottish monastery.

This novel was overlooked by the Booker Prize judges despite being quite similar to, and IMHO better than Ian McEwan's "Amsterdam" (the winner in 1998). Both are very short books by established writers of the highest calibre, and both have truly preposterous plots...

Ah yes, the plot. Dr. Hildegard Wolf is a psychiatrist who prefers to talk about herself rather than listen to her patients' problems. While working in Paris she finds herself in the unusual position of having two clients both of whom claim to be the long lost Lord Lucan. A hopeless gambler, ironically nicknamed 'Lucky', he scarpered after murdering his children's nanny by mistake in 1974 - not so lucky then (although not as unlucky as the poor nanny who Lucan had mistaken for his wife).

Spark succinctly recounts the events leading to the murder and his disappearance throwing in some fascinating details of Lucan's food faddishness: apparently he liked (likes??) to eat smoked salmon and lamb chops every day.

And Dr. Wolf has a skeleton in her own past - she too had to flee the law after a brief spell as a phoney stigmatic ...and the Lord Lucans know all about it. What do they want from her? Are they in cahoots? Is one of them the real Lucky or are they both lying? Why would anyone claim to be a missing murderer anyway? What is their game? And will a pair of Lucan hunters get Lucky? I'm not telling you - read the book!

I will say this much though, whereas the denouement of "Amsterdam" is ludicrous (mutual murder by legal euthanasia in Holland) the ending of "Aiding and Abetting" is delicious...