Rating: 
Summary: Muriel Still Sparkles
Review: "Aiding and Abetting" has Muriel Spark's trademark lightness and deftness of style. It isn't one of her deepest books, and it lacks the poignancy of her best work; but she still sparkles. As we Muriel Spark Groupies know, she has had a lifelong fascination with the theme of the wrong person (from the murderer's point of view - from the victim's point of view, of course, it's always the wrong person) being murdered by mistake, because that's what almost happened to her when she was a young woman. I wonder if this is the reason this true-crime story appealed to her. I also see echoes of Evelyn Waugh in this book; this is meant as praise, not criticism. I miss the undercurrent of the supernatural, especially the sinister characters who may or may not be demons, that characterizes her best work. For those reading Muriel Spark for the first time, I recommend my favorite of all her books, "A Far Cry From Kensington." You won't be disappointed.
Rating: 
Summary: Bad boys meet bad girl
Review: 25 years after the seventh Earl of Lucan clobbered his wife and killed the nanny, he shows up in Paris at the office of psychiatrist Dr. Hildegard Wolf. But she already has a patient who claims to be Lord Lucan. Will the real one please prove it? And what about Hildegard, who really is Beate Pappenheim, a fugitive fake stigmatic from Bavaria? The author has great fun twisting things around between these three bad people, at times coming close to the Keystone Cops. But blood will tell, with murder, with stigmata and with the British nobility. This book does not make much sense, but it is good fluffy fun.Amusing sideline: Bavaria had a well-known stigmatic - Therese von Konnersreuth - who "practised" there from 1925 until her death in the 1960s. She was never accused of fraud but, to this day, Rome is rather sceptical.
Rating: 
Summary: A witty mystery...
Review: A mystery filled with wit, and based on the famous Lord Lucan case (a murderer who escaped, and to this day, no one knows if he's alive or dead). Spark has not lost her touch, and this is a short, engaging book that you won't want to put down.
Rating:
Summary: For people who know how to deal
Review: A remarkably entertaining read from the author of "A Far Cry from Kensington", which incidentally, is the first Muriel Spark novel in my collection.
Not only for true crime afficionados, the story serves to fill in the blanks in the life of the 7th Earl of Lucan, who disappeared in November 1974, after mistakenly murdering the nanny, and attempting to murder his estranged wife.
With a little help from his friends, he has managed to elude capture, and stay one step ahead of the law. He is declared officially dead in 1999.
Enter Dr. Hildegard Wolf, roving German "psychiatrist", who charges huge fees to talk mainly about herself. She soon has two patients claiming to be Lord Lucan, and she suspects that the pair are in fact partners, and up to no good.
Sure enough, her chequered and spotted past comes to light, and unable to report her patients to the authorities, she deals with the situation in her own way, as she is not without friends herself.
Enter Lacey, daughter of one of Lucan's friends, and Dr. Joseph Murray, another Lucan acquaintance, who set off on a search mission, which ends up as a quest of mutual self discovery.
With more people studying the habits of the original Lord, the game begins afresh, and the world becomes a little smaller for the two "Lucans", as their aristocratic shield begins to thin and fade.
Muriel Spark throws together a group of unlikeable characters, and concocts a gripping story with a most fitting if slightly abrupt ending.
Amanda Richards, August 20, 2004
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing
Review: A vividly imagined tale of what might have been had the infamous Lucky Lucan (wanted for murder) come to Paris with his body double, settled in for overpriced psychotherapy with a former fake stigmatic and ultimately ended up sealing his fate in a most unexpected (and unbelievable) way. Although clever in places, witty in spots, I found this book a quick read primarily because I wanted to be finished with it quickly. The characters were brittle and unsympathetic. The scenes artificial. The book flowed like a swift stream, confident even cocky in places, but lacking the kind of depth that makes you want to dive in and swim.
Rating:
Summary: Great treatment of a true crime story
Review: A wonderful book that can be read in one sitting, which I did. The psychiatrist, with her strange background, is sufficiently weird and fits right in with the rest of the characters. Loved the ending. It could happen. Maybe it has!
Rating:
Summary: Deadpan Hilarity
Review: Everything in *Aiding and Abetting* is doubled--the characters, the plot lines, the language, even the title. And this division runs through the book and gives it a strangely opaque equipoise in the midst of its frenetically jammed incidents and its plethora of characters. All this in 166 pages! The tone is moral, but the perspective from which judgments should emanate is not immediately apparent, though we are presented with villains and rogues aplenty. The result is a breathless and giddy novel, like many of her others. How much pleasure this affords you I suppose is a matter of personal taste, but I loved every balanced sentence of it, and I found its deadpan hilarity so captivating that my immediate reaction on finish it the first time was to start it again. Muriel Spark is inimitable; this is one of her best.
Rating:
Summary: Thumbs down
Review: Here's one British reader who is feeling generous this morning so has given 'Aiding and Abetting' two stars instead of one... The seventh Earl of Lucan disappeared on November 7, 1974, having bludgeoned the child-minder to death and failed to dispose of his wife in the same manner. By all accounts, he was a fairly useless individual, so it should come as no surprise that he mistook his intended target. If he is to be remembered (which seems fairly unlikely in the long term) it will be for the fact that, despite having no obvious talents or abilities (other than the consistent ability to lose at gambling), he has managed to evade the law for so long. Suspicion lies with the so-called nobility for having sheltered and financed him for so many years "...to protect his good name..." can you believe! If Muriel Spark is to be remembered, it will most likely be for 'The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie'. It will most certainly not be for 'Aiding and Abetting' which reads like an unfinished second draft. The sentence structure is impoverished, the characters lack either characterization or motivation, and the story is, frankly, stupid. Save your money... you'd do better buying a Superman comic.
Rating:
Summary: Not up to par
Review: I have long been a fan of Muriel Spark's, truly enjoying her humor and style. I liked her autobiography as well. But this book is a great disappointment. The characters are shallow: in particular, Dr. Wolf is cardboard and scarcely believable. There is a certain sense of haste: events are barely sketched, and it is all quickly brought to a conclusion, without going into any detail. A very thin book indeed, which would probably have received much less attention if the author did not have such a reputation.
Rating:
Summary: An exquisitely-made little jewel-like box-- unfortunately em
Review: I kept getting the feeling as I read this book that I was supposed to be impressed by its elegance--an elegant, exotic heroine, living in Paris. Not one, but two men claiming to be an internationally-famous criminal. Spare, sophisticated prose and dialogue. But I just couldn't make myself be interested in the characters or the plot.I can't be more specific without revealing more of the plot, but I just couldn't feel that the plot was interesting or believable. The characters were so sparely drawn that I just couldn't care about them. Perhaps if I were a Muriel Sparks junkie, I might be more excited, but I just wasn't.
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