Skylark's Song

A mystery lies at the core of this family saga from the author of Shadow Mountain : What has become of certain invaluable manuscripts composed by Michael Shane, a veteran songwriter dead since 1950 and about to be feted at a 75th-birthday salute at New York City's Lincoln Center? An enormous--frequently unmanageable--cast are all in some manner implicated in the works' disappearance: three fractious generations of Shanes, an unsavory group of Broadway producers and lawyers and some shadowy figures from Hollywood. Michael's widow Julia fears that her son Scott, a tax attorney, wants the music for his own avaricious ends, while Scott's socially prominent wife has a startling revelation for her husband. Many apparently innocuous characters are not what they seem, including Murray Baker, Michael's erstwhile collaborator and an early confidant of Julia's, who gives new meaning to the words treachery and betrayal. Despite occasional melodrama and bathos, the novel is buoyed by entertaining character portraits and pleasingly unexpected plot twists. 50,000 first printing; national advertising; first serial to Good Housekeeping. (May)