DEATH IN BERLIN

Kaye's latest, set in 1953 Berlin, finds newly posted British Army Officer Robert Melville settling in with jealous, homesick wife Stella, daughter Lotte, and governess Marie Beljame. Robert's pretty cousin Miranda is visiting and finds her traumatic-childhood war memories revived by a story of missing diamonds and murder--a story told by a Brigadier Brindley, who's found next morning stabbed to death. Army investigator Simon Lang is suspicious of all the Brigadier's listeners, among them Colonel Leslie and wife Norah, Major Marson and his nervous, German-born wife Elsa, young officer Andy Page and flirtatious wife Sally. Then the murder of the Melville's housekeeper followed by the drowning of their governess sends the little army coterie into a well-bred frenzy. Emotional undercurrents and echoes of the past abound, but the answer is in the present, as Miranda discovers in a face-to-face with the murderer--Lang to the rescue, of course. Though fraught with the trembling hands and stricken glances typical of the author's style (Death in Cyprus, etc.), Death in Berlin provides leisurely, well-plotted, affable entertainment.