A Temporary Ghost

Narrator heroine Georgia Lee Maxwell, last seen in Magic Mirror , is an American journalist based in Paris, a ruminative amateur sleuth and very much a lady. In a mystery that seems a throwback to a kinder, gentler genre, she agrees to ghostwrite the life story of Vivien Howard, chief suspect in the murder of her tycoon husband. Arriving at her employer's Provence villa, Georgia Lee finds a nest of neurotics: beautiful Vivien; her ``dismissed'' housekeeper Pedro; reclusive, poetry-writing daughter Blanche; devilishly handsome, rather shady son, Alex; and artist-lover Ross, who provided Vivien's alibi. Georgia Lee must puzzle out Vivien's ambivalent attitude toward the book, Blanche's guilty secret-keeping, the shady business Alex is up to and her own attraction to Ross. The leisurely pace has an old-fashioned appeal, and Georgia Lee displays the foolish tendencies of demure sleuths of an earlier time, but after another murder she spots the clue that fingers the killer and winds up this engaging tale. (Nov.)