The Split Second

When wealthy Anna Davison-Maclean dies, her middle-aged spinster daughter Fiona, free of a selfish, domineering and petulant parent, looks forward to a liber ated future. As a first step, she takes a holiday at a Scottish watering place and, ripe for exploitation, meets a fortune- hunting cad and marries him. Then she disappears. Lennox Kemp, formerly a solicitor, but now an operator on the staff of McCready's Detective Agency, agrees to search for the missing lady. It shortly turns out that she has drowned. Suspicion falls on the new husband, but he has an alibi so impregnable that the police come to believe that it can't be broken. Kemp perseveres, however, and ultimately unravels the murder. Literate detective fiction, this novel keeps the reader guessing until the end. The Northern Scotland mise-en-scene is en tertaining, and the characters are persua sively done. (February