A PARCEL OF THEIR FORTUNES

Photojournalist Helen Bullock (who usually sleuths with her longtime lover Simon Bede) is on her own this time--visiting an ill friend in Marrakesh, where she soon encounters an array of exotic non-natives: eccentric expatriate Gleb Kauder, who prefers wandering the desert to city living; tycoon Lord Stanley Overton, patron of a local center for crippled children; Overton's delicate wife, heiress Neva; and Erica Portland, a gifted designer with ruthless aspirations to a London boutique of her own. Then, while Helen is touring the children's center, a crippled teacher there dies in a drowning accident--quickly followed by, the death of Gleb Kauder (who turns out to be the father of that crippled teacher) in the desert town where Helen has been watching the filming of an Overton Enterprises commercial. A complex murder plot? Of course, and Helen slowly weaves the threads, some of which stretch back to a Spanish WW II prison camp. . . . With lots of sophisticated conversation, Byfield's refreshingly oblique style, an ironic windup, and a picture of Morocco in the dead of winter that you won't find in the travel brochures--leisurely delivery, but a very classy parcel indeed.