VENETIAN MASK

by Mickey Friedman ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 18, 1987

Again, Friedman (The Hurricane Season, The Fault Tree, Paper Phoenix) maximizes an exotic setting: Carnival in Venice. But lacking a strong protagonist and thus a clear focus, this twisty tale of intrigue and murder plays like controlled chaos etched against a colorful backdrop. The story begins in Paris, when mousy Sally, the book's pallid heroine, learns that her gorgeous husband, Brian, is sleeping with buddy Jean-Pierre, The two men and two other youths--Francine, an intellectual obsessed with Sartre; Rolf, a wolfish wanderer--have formed a clique led by aging American radical Tom. Distraught, Sally reluctantly agrees to accompany the group to Venice, where they'll play a mind-game: each will masquerade as his or her secret self, with the object being to identify the others under the masks. Sally decides to go as a corpse. In Venice, whose elegant decadence Friedman evokes splendidly, the riot of Carnival sweeps Sally towards a shocking sight: Brian, costumed as Medusa, floating murdered in a canal. A harlequin figure consoles her, taking her to his palazzo. He's Count Michele Zanon, a wealthy dissolute who begins to toy with the clique members as they respond to the death. Francine, who's taken up with a rich lesbian, cares least; Jean-Pierre, cloistered in his room, grieves; Roif wanders the damp streets, anxious; Tom decides to write a book about the incident. Through too-obvious shadowing, Friedman throws clouds of suspicion around Rolf, Tom, and the enigmatic Michele, who visits the varied clique members, stirring up fear and guilt. Meanwhile, Sally, who now is as dazed as the reader, alternately is stalked by another Medusa and tiptoes around Michele's palazzo--until Rolf, whose obsession about her has grown, kidnaps her. But as he rowboats her away, a harlequin strikes him and tries to bash Sally too. A struggle ensues; Sally unmasks the harlequin: a truly unexpected party is the killer. Although Friedman excels at atmospherics, her local coloring pales beneath her diffuse plotting and foggy characters. Not up to par.

Pub Date: May 18, 1987

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Scribners

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1987

Categories: FICTION