THE LEMON GARDEN

The British author of Some Pleasure There to Find (1976) turns from airy romance to sturdily plotted mystery/suspense—in an Italy-set story that keeps pace with the flights of an amnesiac actress from pursuits by assassins and her own demons. Joanna Fleming, hospitalized after an auto accident, remembers nothing about her life, her friends, her career. But, still, there's that certainty that something horrible has occurred. Gradually, Joanna will return to the circle of friends she's left— a faithful lover, a concerned aunt-by-marriage, the aunt's irritable son, a brilliant film director, and others. But just now out of the hospital, she's tormented by a ``nameless horror'' when she holds an odd earring (was its mate worn by a corpse in the lake?), as well as when she visits her aunt's lemon garden, where words of evil come through like ``points of light in a fog.'' Chases, disguises, an apparition, two women murdered—by the end, all will lead to the lemon garden.... The first-person narration is routine female-victim blab-all, but the pace is fast and steady, and the mystery meticulously constructed.