Mosiac

Moody, author of the Penny Wanawake mysteries, centers this entertaining but fragmented thriller around Frances Breet, the daughter of a French mother and a recently assassinated American journalist father. In Istanbul, Fran meets Nicholas Marquend, a mysterious and captivating British ex-soldier; the two begin to fall in love, but when Nick disappears, Fran assumes that he changed his mind about the relationship. Only when she returns to England does she learn that Nick, whose real name was Daniel Forrest, has been tortured and murdered. As Fran seeks to discover his killer and the secrets he hid from her, we hear about several people in his life, such as Philippe de Pierrey, Daniel's childhood friend; Sola, a beautiful model; and Alexander Campion, once a lonely and tormented schoolboy but now in change of a powerful charity. All the characters are connected in an intricate web that unfortunately contains many loose threads. With inconsistent leaps between time frames, implausible connections and unlikely coincidences, Moody weakens her colorful tale. Doubleday Book Club and Literary Guild featured alternates. (Aug.)