A Voice in the Dark

Lorrimer ( Mavree , Last Year's Nightingale ) has as heroine of her latest romantic novel Laura Howard, a pretty English nurse vacationing in Italy, who is so solicitous of an Italian noblewoman who faints before her eyes that she is forthwith invited to stay at the castle. There she falls instantly in love with Domenico, the blind heir apparent, and plays exquisitely for him, from the entire classical repertoire, on a piano that, miraculously, is unlocked for the first time on the day of her arrival. Mysteries multiply: a bridge gives way as Domenico is about to cross it, a chest falls from a balcony, just missing his head, the brakes of his car fail. But in spite of the peculiarities of the householda drug-taking sister-in-law in love with Domenico but married to his drunken, libidinous younger brother, and a male secretary privy to all Domenico's affairsonly Laura scents conspiracy. Not until Laura is poisoned does Domenico become suspicious. All ends as well as it can in a novel whose stilted sentences pass for dialogue, whose characters have names but not faces, and about whose outcome few readers will care very much. (September)