THE VILLAIN OF THE PIECE

A book within a book but the problem is that Mr. Kauffmann doesn't make either of them very vital although they feature a combination of his early successful crime and later domestic problem stories with some exposure to writing and publishing, (particularly the publisher lunch). Fred, comfortably married (but then there's younger, glamorous Rosalind on the side), writes annals of true crime and a new editor with some clout commissions him to work up the story of Madeleine--Victorian old lace and arsenic. As he does so it occasions closer-to-home parallels -- his daughter's marriage is in real trouble and, worse, his son attempts suicide which makes him wonder if -- by default -- he is not the ""villain of the piece."" Although Kauffmann is writing about a middle-aged man, he often makes him sound much older (""I met an attractive lass"") while the candor intended to invite concern often reduces to just the earnestness of the heavy pater familias.