JACKDAW

A different--literate for one thing--and equally original follow-up to Scorpion framed by the old French town of Albi when Tony, British writer and part-time husband, comes to the house where old Mme Malines, ""sharp and greedy"" as a jackdaw, had been murdered. Of her sisters, one went mad, one was sent away years ago to be lady-in-waiting to Mexico's Empress Carlotta. No one talks, however, and in the hush of suspicion who would anticipate the still more encysted malevolence elsewhere? Improbable perhaps, surprising surely--a sinuous, baleful entertainment.