THE FLIGHT OF THE FALCON

Daphne du Maurier is an excellent storyteller and can set in motion the most wornout mechanisms of melodrama in a way that doesn't irritate. The Flight of the Falcon depends on the reader acceptance of so many coincidences that it is hard to believe that the bird will ever get off the ground, but it does. The story is set in Ruffano, Italy, a small university city that has grown up around the old ducal palaces. The Donati brothers, separated for 20 years by WWII, each believing the other to be dead, are reunited after the younger chances to slip some money to his old nurse in Rome (whom he believes to be a beggar) thus causing her murder. Happenstance does pile up that way, but the main set of chance discoveries revolve around the brothers. Aldo, the elder, has all the psychological trappings of a sado-homosexual. At 40, he is in charge of a band of bully boys who run around in medieval dress committing brutal pranks on chosen victims. Beo, the younger is 34, still drawn to the brother who had made his early years both exciting and frightening with daring expeditions and hellish taunts. Beo is the narrator and he recounts the events leading up to the Ruffano festival. Planned by Aldo, who is a master of mob psychology, the festival is to feature a reenactment of the legendary dukes — the elder who was driven to his death by an aroused populace for his cruel excesses and succeeded by the younger, in whom the mixture of good and evil is more balanced, leaving the good on top. Guess who plays each role? It's a full cast and a colorful seating. Too bad Hollywood hasn't gone in for this sort of thing in fifteen years or so. However, if Mary Stewart and Victoria Holt can crest the bestseller lists with their weaker offerings, Daphne's dilly should make it with exactly the same audience increased by those hopefuls who remember Rebecca.