SPANISH LADY

Utterly unlike anything Walsh has done before -- and not a success. Possibly there is a market for it among mystery fans, though even in this field the story bogs down in the slow paced unravelling of a murder. The setting is a village in the Highlands (and Walsh handles the feel of place well). The period is that following the Dunkirk evacuation. And the characters include a General of the old aristocracy, his lovely Spanish wife, the Scottish villagers whose half-Spanish nephew, recuperating from Dunkirk, falls in love with the General's wife, and other inhabitants of the Valley. The General is killed; the lovers suspect each other; the whole village is implicated. In the unravelling of the mystery, the romance takes second place. We wish Walsh would go back to the genre of The Road to Nowhere, where he is supreme.