Muriel Spark, a prolific Scottish writer, critic and satirist,
is probably best-known for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961),
a controversial novel which also became an acclaimed film.
Spark's fiction is characterized by the use of certain
techniques which give her often short novels a feeling of
complexity and depth. Her new novel, Aiding and Abetting, is
true to form short in length and long on style. In this quirky
tale of murder, blackmail and false identities, Spark widens the
book's scope by using an omniscient third-person narrator and
unexpected time and place shifts. These techniques, coupled with
her witty, understated way of revealing unusual events, makes
Aiding and Abetting a delightfully strange and surprising tale.
The inspiring "spark" for this story was a real-life upper-class
crime story that caused a sensation in the British press. As
Spark tells us in her opening Note to Readers, the real-life
seventh Earl of Lucan disappeared in 1974 when he fled from
charges of murder (oops he killed h