VOICES IN AN EMPTY HOUSE

This, the most modern of Joan Aiken's entertainments, utilizes all her spendthrift energies so that it's the more the better, or rather the more the worse, and hellbent all the way. Take Thomas Cook, the nicest person around except for a young girl adding a hopeful coda at the end — he blanks out on the pain-killing drug he has to have while he is looking for the stepson whose money he controls; that's Gabriel, son of a fine, deceased Nobel-ist and an avid, spiteful, dishonest woman Bells (who had actually adopted him) and Gabriel has disappeared although he urgently needs a heart operation. Then there's Bells, and her twin brother Bo (incest here) and Bo's friend James (homosexuality there) who of course want Gabriel's money — Gabriel who is now somewhere in America, perhaps kidnapped. It's incessant but Miss Aiken doesn't really insult your intelligence since she's impounded it from the beginning and you find yourself reading it all too easily so why won't others.