THE QUESTION OF MAX

Kate Fansler, the polysyllabic professor close to Dorothy Sayers in literary toniness, wonders about her colleague Maximillian Reston who's been left the estate of an English writer in Maine where there's a body on the rocks. Max is suavely disdainful, but he has something to conceal; the search takes Kate from the Cosmopolitan Club to Oxford and while ""certain argots are forbidden,"" they do emerge--one is grateful--from the lips of her protege. The story's still thin (if better than her last) since ""A bird can roost but on one branch"" (Old Chinese Proverb) which is the kind of choice referral that drops like peacock feathers here and there.