Highlights of the Off-Season

The sequel to Most Cunning Workmen and A Gathering of Ghosts is a must for the British author's enthusiastic following. This spellbinder opens with Lewis again drawing his modest hero Arnold Landon into a net cast by unscrupulous types who scheme to pass as philanthropists while fraudulently acquiring rights to a Northumbrian farm. The owner is frail, timid Sarah Ellis, but her companion, Mildred Sauvage-Brown, is a brawny and truculent woman who protests that the condemnation of the site means destroying natural treasures. As the planning inspector, Landon agrees, but their case is dismissed and the developers are triumphant until Sarah Ellis is found murdered. The missal that the woman had compulsively clutched disappears, which gives Landon a clue as to her murderer and the surprising denouement when he and Sauvage-Brown are face-to-face with the killer. Original and skillfully constructed, the latest Landon adventure deserves an A-plus. (September 2)