FAREWELL TO THE FLESH

The stabbing of photographer Valentine Gibbon at the height of the Venetian carnevale seems tailor-made for amateur sleuth Urbino Macintryre and his friend and confidante Barbara, Countess da Capo- Zendrini (Death in a Serene City, 1990), especially after revelations about Val's tirelessly sub rosa financial and sexual activities implicate his current lover Hazel Reeve; Barbara's old schoolmate Berenice Pillow, and her gay stepson Tonio Vico; Dora Spaak, Val's fellow-lodger among the nuns at Casa Crispina, and her brother Nicholas and mother Stella Maris Spaak; and self-styled spiritualist Xenia Campi, who spends all her time passing out leaflets condemning the commercialism of the carnevale (``Venice is not Disney World!''). As before: lots of masks, genteel aspersions, red herrings, leisurely interrogations, lovers' confessions, and dollops of high culture. Just the thing for readers who think Ngaio Marsh died too young.