Posthumous Jealousy

CHRISTINA -- Claude Houghton -- Doubleday, Doran ($2.50).

Peter Brand was a successful London businessman who had two passions and no other interests: his work and his wife Christina. When his wife died Brand nearly went out of his head with helpless grief. One day he found a packet of her letters in a locked drawer. They were not addressed to anybody, but they were love-letters. He also found an address book. Because he was frightfully in love with his wife and because he knew she had had "artistic" friends, Brand became convinced that she had had a lover. Feeding his suspicions on whiskey and insomnia, he set himself to tracking the man down.

One by one, with variably plausible excuses, he looked up the men whose addresses were on the list. First was Tony, the moderately successful but immoderately handsome artist who had painted Christina's portrait. Tony volunteered the information that he had been in love with her, asked her to be his mistress but she had refused. Brand felt momentarily better. Then in turn he visited: a less talented neurotic, on the verge of a nervous breakdown; his ex-chauffeur; a down-&-out book-reviewer. Three men on the list he failed to see. One, a religious maniac, had shot himself; another, a famed athlete, had disappeared; the third, an elderly artist who had painted Christina in the nude before her marriage, died before Brand could reach him.

Not sure that any one of these was the man, Brand drank harder, slept less, went on brooding. Though he despised the sensitive artistic type, the knowledge that these men had all been Christina's friends forced him into their company. By the time his nearly-crazy suspicions had convinced him that his beloved wife had been promiscuous, incestuous and a Lesbian, it was only natural that he should take some desperate way out. But readers not in Brand's pinching boots will not jump so far or so readily to conclusions as he, may indeed guess as early as p. 15 that he is going to make a terrible fool of himself.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.