THE NOCTURNE MURDER
By
A first work of fiction introducing Jane Winfield--a sweet, serious, not-too-brilliant graduate music student from California who's researching her dissertation in London after an aborted romance with untrustworthy Brian. Jane attracts the interest of dilettantish womanizer and music critic Max Fordham, father of homosexual Alan and gorgeous Sheila, who's involved with drug-dealing rock-musician Fritz Morgan. Max is estranged from but still living with glacial wife Cynthia, whose lover he refers to as ""Horrid Hugh."" When Max is found murdered in her apartment, Jane is arrested and charged with the killing. Fortunately, her yound widower professor Andrew Quentin and even more attractive lawyer James Hall are on hand to do a little sleuthing that eventually extricates our heroine from her misery. The plot's manipulations are unwieldy and unconvincing; there's more genteel romance than mystery; but London's physical ambiance and concert world are well drawn, and the straightforward, unpretentious writing style is refreshing, though blandness and echoes of Nancy Drew prevail.