Puccini's Ghosts

At the start of British author Joss's somber fifth novel of psychological suspense, opera singer Lila du Cann (né e Eliza Duncan) returns to her childhood home on the Scottish coast to bury her estranged father. As she starts clearing out the family house, a chance visit to the attic awakens memories of the summer she was 15. Flashback to 1960. Lila's charming uncle George, a music teacher, arrives from London and her warring parents agree willy-nilly to finance an amateur staging of Puccini's opera ""Turandot"". Uncle George, the producer, hires an attractive tenor, Joe Foscari, for the male lead of Calaf. Soon Lila is smitten, but does Joe have designs on the adolescent girl or do his affections lie elsewhere? Despite a cast of expertly drawn characters, each unhappy in his or her own way, the plot is slow to develop. Still, Joss, whose ""Half Broken Things"" (2005) won the CWA Silver Dagger Award, shows real promise that she may one day join the ranks of Ruth Rendell and P.D. James. ""(Aug.)"" .