REINCARNATION IN VENICE

by Max Ehrlich ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 1979

If Ehrlich, author of the triumphantly dumb The Reincarnation of Peter Proud, intends to echo Thomas Mann in the title of this new novel, it's a classic case of plummeting from the sublime to the ridiculous. How ridiculous, you ask? Well, back in 1954 young Vittorio Favretto, a marvelously tailored Venetian, darkly handsome and patrician, goes out for an evening walk to meet with his good friend and family counselor, Teodoro Borsato, and is murdered on the Fondamenta de la Malvesia Vecchia, his body then wrapped in chains and dropped into the canal. Now it's 1979, and young David Drew, N.Y. bachelor and operations-research specialist for a computer firm, is attracted by a gold medallion in a Third Ave. hockshop window, an amulet with a big male lion clutching a scroll in each paw. The chain and medal cost $400, but he buys them. Waking up one morning in his girlfriend's bed (she's a Newsweek researcher), David tries to knock off 20 minutes of TM and is invaded by strange, horrible faces drifting through his mantra. Whenever he meditates they reappear. Then his firm gets an order from the Shah of Iran for a computer expert to come out and fix their bolloxed computers. Off David goes, but his plane blows a fuse and lays over in Venice. Now David is really hit by the horrors. Soon he sees the body of Vittorio in his visions, and he leads the police to the longlost bones. The ravishing widow Bianca Favretto, now married to Teodoro the Slimy, identifies the gold medallion on the bones as her husband's--and David's medallion proves that he is Vittorio's reincarnation. She's old enough to be his mother, but they quickly hit the sack while Teodoro plans a last murder. . . David's! Demente!

Pub Date: March 1, 1979

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1979

Categories: FICTION