Walk with the Sickle Moon

Norris's third novel ( More Than Seven Watchmen ) is a strangely anachronistic story. Widow Laura Kendall comes to the French town of Montreuil to look for the grandchild whom she knows her dead son sired while on Army duty in the area. Fortuitously, she discovers the boy living with his widowed grandfather, Dr. Duriez; to her surprise, the child's mother, now living in Paris, agrees to Laura's request to take him to America. A series of events ensue in which Mrs. Kendall's and Dr. Duriez's moral scruples are examined and reexamined until a resolution is reached. The novel is an almost perfect simulacrum of a Henry James novella, replete with minor characters acting as ficelles , or sounding boards, for the leading characters--whose sensibiities are as rarified as any James created. The difference lies in a facile happy ending and in the story's lack of impact. (Oct.)