LIGNY'S LAKE

The official disappearance of one Ligny in Melbourne is believed by all except the narrator, Carmichael, an acquaintance who pursues the matter with little to go on. Only a prize copy of Walden awarded to a woman fifty years ago, which takes him backward, then a little forward, to an episode during the war when Ligny was said to have taken three lives, and to the present, when survivors of that incident are determined to seek revenge on a desolate island. Even if the end is not unexpected, Courtier tells a tight story within the traditional frame of the frame-up and it is at all times convincing.