Bookends

OPERA ANECDOTES

by Ethan Mordden

Oxford; 267 pages; $16.95

Every opera fan knows how high Tosca bounced, when the next swan left and what Maria Callas thought of Renata Tebaldi; disasters, bons mots and bitchy remarks seem integral to the art. Ethan Mordden, who knows his way around backstage (Demented: The World of the Opera Diva; The Splendid Art of Opera), has gleefully amassed hundreds of such anecdotes, exchanges and choice bits of opera lore, along with some less celebrated stories. "Yet there is history here," he says, "for if many of the tales are silly, many others are telling."

Did you know that Verdi refunded most of the expenses of a man who had twice traveled to Parma from Reggio to see Aida, only to hate it both times, with the proviso that he never again attend a Verdi premiere? Or that Sir Thomas Beecham once advised a tenor to sing the last scene of La Boheme on the bed next to the dying Mimi? "In that position, my dear fellow," said the redoubtable baronet, "I have performed some of my greatest achievements." And who can top the advice Richard Tucker once gave Franco Corelli, when the golden-calved Italian tenor asked the American for the secret of his way with Puccini? "To sing it right, Franco," said the former Reuben Ticker, "you have to be Jewish." You could look it up.

A CRIMINAL COMEDY

by Julian Symons

Viking; 220 pages; $14.95

Rare indeed is the mystery novelist who ages well. Agatha Christie lost her sense of humor, Dorothy Sayers her plot outlines, John le Carre his vital interest in the genre. But at 73, Julian Symons has just published perhaps his best mystery ever, a fiendish little puzzle that is elegantly written and pitilessly observed.

As he has often done in the past, Symons sets his "comedy" in a thriving town just outside London, among attractive, successful, venal people. This crowd is all connected to PC Travel, a partnership between mean, porcine Charles Porson and charming, handsome Derek Crowley. The plot starts out with a littering of anonymous letters around town, accusing Crowley of an affair with Porson's pretty young wife. There are two clumsy attempts at murder and then two quite successful ones that occur on a PC tour of Venice. If the terrain is familiar to Symons, every detail is fresh, right down to the crisp use of Venice, blessedly free of tax write-off color. A Criminal Comedy is a , zestful work of a master still challenging his craft.

LIE DOWN WITH LIONS

by Ken Follett

Morrow; 333 pages; $18.95

The main weapon in Ken Follett's arsenal is surprise. In his past thrillers, crescendos occur in such unpredictable locales as the Mediterranean in the '60s (Triple) and England on the eve of D-day (Eye of the Needle). His sixth best seller centers on Afghanistan, overrun by Soviet troops. It is also invaded by Jane Lambert. She has followed her conniving French husband, a physician-spy who informs the Soviets while he tends to the needs of wounded Afghans. A year before, she had a liaison with an American CIA operative named Ellis, and now, in a coincidence that would shame a Victorian novelist, the lovers meet again. No point of this isosceles triangle provides a sympathetic character, and the grim KGB and opaque Afghan tribesmen offer little respite from treachery. All that remains is a sense of place, an unrelenting pace and the question of who will survive. This time it is a close contest between antagonist, protagonist and reader.

THE DEER LEAP

by Martha Grimes

Little, Brown; 236 pages; 15.95

Martha Grimes, an American, has written seven very English mysteries, set in plausible villages and named for actual pubs. Having brought off the parlor trick of feigned Britishness, however, she has gradually lost sight of the larger purpose: to tell an affecting story. Several recent books petered out into pointless complications, and her tone gradually degenerated from unforced humor to strained comic relief. In The Deer Leap, Grimes has recouped her early charm and energy.

The central characters of this brilliantly interwoven multiple narrative are the oddly similar but warring members of a family whose blood bonds are concealed. The most mysterious of them is an adolescent girl, devoted to animals and sternly mistrustful of people; her antecedents are shadowy, her standards forthright. The novel's murders are motivated equally by greed, fear and the family's poisonous spirit. If the finale offers many explanations, it has few consolations. Faithful to what has gone before, its lyrically brutal passages evoke a messy and cruel world in which kindness seems to beget nothing but peril.