The Baring Fault

Born at the turn of the century, Charles Baring is a son of the English Establishment, endowed with money, intelligence and political acuity. From Eton, he goes to the trenches in France in World War I and then is shipped with the British Expeditionary Forces to Russia in 1918. In the fighting at Archangel, Baring decides that the British role in suppressing the Bolshevik Revolution is not only misguided but corrupt. He deserts to become a comrade, but canny commissars persuade him to rejoin his regiment as a Kremlin agent. Mustered out, Baring enters British politics, always in collusion with Moscow; eventually he becomes Prime Minister. Stonehouse (My Trial, once a Labor Party cabinet member, later convicted for fraud after a sensational faked suicide attempt, writes knowledgeably and with accurate historical detail about the deterioration of British life and politics in the last 90 years. Skillfully constructed, the novel mixes fact and invention adroitly. (April 28)