CALLANDER SQUARE

The second appearance of Victorian London's Inspector Pitt, but showing him to less advantage than did the livelier, tighter Cater Street Hangman (p. 708). Pitt is now married to sensible and pleasant Charlotte (of Cater Street), and it's Charlotte and her flightier sister Emily, now Lady Aston, who do most of the basic sleuthing when the bodies of two babies are discovered in the ""quality"" neighborhood of Callander Square. Emily and Charlotte (undercover as Emily's spinster sister with secretarial accomplishments) sniff out scandals which would bear on unwanted births: an unmarried daughter pregnant by a blackmailing footman; the non-conjugal pregnancy of a young woman married to an elderly man; the unsavory peccadilloes of a rakish gentleman who prefers parlormaids, one of whom died in an abortion; the unsolved mystery of a young girl who eloped and disappeared forever. After a good deal of rather pokey talk, there's a cram-jam of action--discovery of another body, a blackmail attempt, and a stabbing. But this is just too slack as a mystery and not rich enough in cosy domestic detail to compete with Pitt's first outing.