THE MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE OF LEON (I MEAN NOEL)

"Noel glub C blub all. . . I glub new. . . ." These are the last words that Mrs. Carillon hears from her sinking husband before she herself is hit on the head by their capsizing boat and the two of them are taken to the hospital. They are also the first words she has heard from him since they were married at five and seven to cement a soup factory partnership and the young husband was sent away to school, but the devoted Mrs. Carillon spends the next 21 years assiduously searching for Leon (or Noel, as he calls himself) and trying to solve the glub-blubs. She glimpses him once in Bloomingdale's, but he's on the down escalator and she's on the up, and her attempts to get to him only result in her being sent to the Women's House of Detention for inciting to riot. It would be impossible to summarize subsequent events, which progress from the ridiculous to the preposterous, and equally unsporting to disclose the puzzle's solution (which hinges on a horse named Christmas Bells**), but with the help of childhood friend Augie Kunkel (a stammering crossword puzzle-maker whose avocation is nouns) and her adopted twins Tony and Tina, all ends happily at Thanksgiving dinner with a double wedding, a cellmates' reunion, and the promise of fame and fortune all round. The story is as current as the shaved and saffron-robed protesters who help "Free Mrs. Carillon" (or "Free the Orphans' Mother") from the Pest Hole, the pictures (made of words and asterisks) are part of the werbal fun, and the whole's a flamboyantly nimble farce. **a clue