The Arrangement

In Victorian England, Jonathan Chadwick, a musical genius thought to be wickedly arrogant, tries to outwit gossip columnist Kathryn Wainwright, by pretending to be the idiot savant, Pip. Mix in a Stradivarius, a dead mother who left a painful legacy for her son, a lost fortune, some maiming, and a couple of villains, and there's plenty of potential diversion. While some of it pans out, the rest isn't so much diverting as dissonant. Take, for example, the main mistaken-identity premise: Watching Jonathan/Pip's relationship with Kathryn is downright discomfiting because Pip is more boy than man. Stone (The Wicked Truth) isn't a bad writer, but she needs to limit the dark elements in her book to even out the overall tone. (Nov.)