THE ELEVENTH LITTLE INDIAN

A fairly tasty homage to Dame Agatha C., whose theater version of Ten Little Indians is supposedly a current hit in Paris--and one night actor-narrator Paul Samson arrives at the theater to find all the other members of the cast dead in their dressing rooms. Naturally. Plus--there's a total stranger dead in his own. Samson soon is playing Capt. Hastings to Superintendent Hector Parescot (a handsomer, younger, more modest version of Hercule Poirot), and together they face a dizzying succession of Christie-isms--timetables, theater-layout sketches, false herrings (missing children, missing wills, missing keys), double identities, hereditary madness, blackmail, aristocrats, and mistresses. But does S‚n‚cal (pseudonym for two actor-playwrights) really match Christie at the all-important denouement? No, not quite--it's a surprise but lacks the Christie stamp of conviction and inevitability--and the prose misses the lightness of Christie at her best. Still, an affectionate scamper through the charming devices of the much-missed Dame A.; her fans (if their expectations aren't too high) will relish every twist.