THE OCTOBER CABARET

When Tess Pennicott returns to Brighton from Canada to run the antique shop left her by an uncle, does she harbor hopes of a reunion with her long-ago lover Ben Wyland, a local businessman who blithely ended their short-lived affair? Never fear. Within a week of Tess' return to England, she's being wooed anew by Ben, has been the victim of an attempted murder, and is beginning to have suspicions about her uncle's death. He supposedly died in a diabetic coma, but Tess wonders about the motives of her uncle's pall--his haughty mistress, his French restaurant-owner neighbor, his lawyer--all of whom appear to have designs on a set of S≤vres porcelain of incalculable value, a ""cabaret"" that seems to exist only in photographs. Plot thickens, romance wanes, Tess finds herself in Prague amidst a plethora of corpses and cabarets, mastermind is revealed, romance waxes again. More gothic than mystery, solidly in the Rinehart/Eberhart tradition--and, as such, a decent effort.