GRAVE RESPONSIBILITY

The warmly appealing Superintendent Bone (Body of Opinion, etc.) takes a back seat here as the focus is on the bizarre and loathsome Clare family, dying off in bizarre and loathsome fashion: Finicky-clean Lionel Clare emerges from the carwash with his throat slit, while the mother he was estranged from, the morosely mad Miranda, and her twin brother Kay are left hand in hand in a gross parody of tenderness in their manor's oddly furnished (life-size mannequins abound) bedroom. Did Lionel kill mummy and uncle (who possibly was his dad), then himselfor did his younger brother, the guilt-ridden Clovis, murder them all? Miranda's diaries provide clues, but, meanwhile, Lionel's tacky wife wants a gander at the will; Miranda's ex, the stuffy Edwin, wants his family heirloom necklace returned; and the childlike Adam, who lived in a treehouse outside Miranda's window, confesses, but...one more dies before Bone sorts through years-old chaos to name the guilty. Lacks Stacey's usual humor and the pacing slows with overlong quotes from Miranda's diaries. Overall, then, a lesser, most eccentric effort.