THE SANDLER INQUIRY

Lacking the sort of bloodlust motif that gave Revenge (1976) its modicum of energy, Hynd resorts to sheer complexity to keep this recherche-du-spies-perdu churning for 300+ pages. The Park Avenue offices of reluctant lawyer Thomas Daniels (his father was a legal biggie) are arsonized, and an innocent bystander is murdered outside his apartment building--apparently mistaken for Thomas. Who is after what? Could it be the Sandler file--as in Arthur Sandler, believed dead, believed crooked, or as in Victoria Sandler, recently deceased, leaving 50 million? Enter leslie McAdam, a Canadian lovely who claims to be A. Sandler's child-by-warbride (WW II), heir to the fortune and victim of twenty years of murder attempts (via vicious Daddy) and identity changes (via British Intelligence). Is Sandler alive? Whom did he spy for--us, Hitler, Stalin, all of the above? And Thomas' revered, late pater--was he really an agent. . . a double agent. . . . Urged on by Leslie's bedtime ministrations, an insufficiently doubting Thomas seeks answers from aging spymasters in London and Switzerland, with assorted thugs appearing at regulation intervals. It would take a stunner of a denouement to justify all that hydraulic plotting, and Hynd, who's a decent, unfussy storyteller scene by scene, just hasn't got one up his long, drip-dry sleeve.