Muriel Spark — Aiding and Abetting / A Novel

Anchor Books. 2002, paperback, very good copy. In <b>Aiding and Abetting</b><i>, </i>the doyenne of literary satire has written a wickedly amusing and subversive novel around the true-crime case of one of England’s most notorious uppercrust scoundrels and the “aiders and abetters” who kept him on the loose.<br><br>When Lord Lucan walks into psychiatrist Hildegard Wolf’s Paris office, there is one problem: she already has a patient who says he’s Lucan, the fugitive murderer who bludgeoned his children’s nanny in a botched attempt to kill his wife. As Dr. Wolf sets about deciding which of her patients, if either, is the real Lucan, she finds herself in a fierce battle of wills and an exciting chase across Europe. For someone is deceiving someone, and it may be the good doctor, who, despite her unorthodox therapeutic method (she talks mainly about her own life), has a sinister past, too.<br>Exhibiting Muriel Spark’s boundless imagination and biting wit, <b>Aiding and Abetting</b><i> </i>is a brisk, clever, and deliciously entertaining tale by one of Britain’s greatest living novelists.