Aiding & abetting : a novel

by Muriel Spark

Paper Book, 2002

Status

Available

Publication

New York : Anchor Books, 2002.

Description

In Aiding and Abetting," "the doyenne of literary satire has written a wickedly amusing and subversive novel around the true-crime case of one of England's most notorious uppercrust scoundrels and the "aiders and abetters" who kept him on the loose. When Lord Lucan walks into psychiatrist Hildegard Wolf's Paris office, there is one problem: she already has a patient who says he's Lucan, the fugitive murderer who bludgeoned his children's nanny in a botched attempt to kill his wife. As Dr. Wolf sets about deciding which of her patients, if either, is the real Lucan, she finds herself in a fierce battle of wills and an exciting chase across Europe. For someone is deceiving someone, and it may be the good doctor, who, despite her unorthodox therapeutic method (she talks mainly about her own life), has a sinister past, too.Exhibiting Muriel Spark's boundless imagination and biting wit, Aiding and Abetting""is a brisk, clever, and deliciously entertaining tale by one of Britain's greatest living novelists.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member laytonwoman3rd
Who's scamming whom, and which preposterous imposter is a killer, and who will find the real fugitive Earl of Lucan (or is he dead?) and who is more afraid of having the past revealed--the hunter or the hunted? Farcical, bloody and blackly humorous. Not, however laugh-out-loud funny, at least in my
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opinion, as promised by some reviewers.
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LibraryThing member crunky
A competent diversion with some understated humor. The third Spark book I've read, but if it had been the first I wouldn't have rushed to pick up a second.
LibraryThing member agirlandherbooks
A spare and enjoyable imaginary romp through what may have happened to Lucky Lucan, a British aristocrat on the lam since 1974. Dame Spark was economical with her use of words, which should serve as an example to other authors (I'm talking to you, Marisha Pessl).
LibraryThing member SirRoger
Delightfully wicked humor: classic Spark. Fictional literary treatment of two legendary criminals, a fraud and a murderer, who really existed and somehow disappeared.
LibraryThing member DameMuriel
So, this is not her best book. Let's just go ahead and lay that on the table. But even her worst books are at least 90% (possibly more) better than most of the other books published at the time of the publication of this book.
Has this ever been filmed? It should be. But not by Martin Scorsese or
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someone lame like that. I don't know who. But not him.
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LibraryThing member Porius
A Lord Lucan ("Lucky Lucan") has killed his children's nanny and bludgeoned his Lady wife. It's years later and two strange characters are seeing a shrink claiming to be the infamous lord. The shrink has a shady past of her own. Beate Pappenheim, now Hildegard Wolf, was a stigmatic who pretended to
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cure the incurables and other hopeless cases. She made quite a bit of money at this scam, but tired of it and set up shop in Paris as a head shrinker.
AIDING AND ABETTING sparkles with wit and the things usual that make her always an entertaining story-teller. Sparks novels, never prolix, have the spare beauty of a Hitchcock heroine: Eva Marie Saint, Grace Kelly, or someone of that ilk. Did I mention that this novel was written in her eighties.
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LibraryThing member Kasthu
Aiding and Abetting is based on a true story, but embellished upon by Muriel Spark. Lord (“Lucky” due to his successes at the gambling tables) Lucan disappeared from England in 1974 after bludgeoning his children’s nanny, intending for it to be his wife. Officially declared dead in 1999, this
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novel is a “what if?” about what happened. The story revolves around a psychotherapist, Hildegard Wolfe, who has a sinister past. One day two patients walk into her office declaring that he is the real Lord Lucan. Which one is which?

As with many of Muriel Spark novels, nothing is what it seems on the surface. It seems at first to be a case of mistaken or hidden identity, but the story evolves into much more than that. This is a pretty bizarre story, filled with farcical coincidences. All of them were “aiders and abetters” who apparently sought to confuse and befuddle the police. Added on top of this is an author looking to write Lord Lucan’s story and publish an exclusive interview with him. It’s interesting that Spark theorizes details of the case that were later verified or speculated upon—such as Lord Lucan having received plastic surgery after the murders. Everyone keeps seeing Lucan everywhere, “but it may not have been him.”

It’s an interesting case, and it’s fun to wonder about what really did happen to the missing Earl. Spark’s tale is purely fantasy, of course, though she sticks with many of the details of the case. In fact, she probably got the idea for the two Lord Lucans from the account of a close friend of Lucans, who saw him in Africa in the 1980s. According to the friend, he saw Lucan standing on a bridge and was later joined by a friend who claimed that he too was Lord Lucan. There are been over 70 “sightings” of him all over the world; in February 2012, new evidence came to light to support the claim that he was in Africa. The question remains, though: is Lucan really dead? By now I think so.
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LibraryThing member gbelik
Two persons come into psychiatrist Hildegard Wolf's office, claiming to to Lord Lucan, who, 25 years earlier, murdered his children's nanny while attempting to kill his wife. Which is the real Lord Lucan and what should she do about it? It all left me rather flat.
LibraryThing member MizPurplest
Delightfully witty and deliciously wicked, this was a fast, fun summer read.
LibraryThing member jonfaith
If one wished, Aiding and Abetting could be regarded as a slight whimsy. The novel could also be regarded as parlor game for deception and dark humor. We meet three charatcrs, two of whom are frauds and the third a muderer, albeit an aristocrat. This situation is pondered and then two other
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characters are inroduced with a shared purpose of locating the murderer. A tissue of circumstances unfold and the novel ends.
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LibraryThing member thorold
Anything but predictable, Spark chooses this novel to try out her own peculiar slant on "true crime". A man walks into the consulting room of a fashionable Paris psychotherapist and tells her that he is the 7th Earl of Lucan, on the run from the police for more than 25 years. A disturbing statement
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at the best of times, more so in this case, as Dr Wolf is already treating another patient who makes the same claim, and furthermore she appears to have something to hide herself...

Spark has fun playing around with the idea of what it would be like to spend such a large part of your life as a fugitive, and with such a nasty crime on your conscience (if indeed you have a conscience). And she enjoys hypothesising about how (and why) Lucan's friends could have protected him for so long. Interestingly, she has her imagined Lucan reflect that his fellow-peers mostly failed to exhibit class solidarity, and that it is his gambling pals who have been financing his undercover lifestyle. She resists the temptation to romanticise Lucan himself, though: he comes across as an arrogant, selfish bore. And he gets treated to a suitably Sparkish ending, too.
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LibraryThing member ValerieAndBooks
This novel is based on the 1974 real-life murder of Lord Lucan's nanny and Lucan's disappearance shortly thereafter. Much speculation has ensued over what his actual final fate was, and whether he was the murderer or not. Author Muriel Spark imagines him reappearing 25 years later (after his
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disappearance) at the doorstep of a psychiatrist with a secret past. This is a whirlwind of a novel.

Even though Spark‘s introduction to Aiding and Abetting stated that the book is based on "Lord 'Lucky' Lucan", I thought at first it was a fake intro with imaginary characters, if that makes sense. But being American (and also being a child in 1974), I guess I missed the news back in the day. About halfway through this novel, something -- I don't recall what exactly -- made me consult "google" and I ended up falling into a rabbit hole learning about this real life mystery. That made me more appreciative of Spark's take on the mysterious case of Lord Lucan.
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LibraryThing member messpots
This is a shockingly poor book and no one should take it as representative of Muriel Spark's work, even her later work. She never seems to have decided what plot structure she wanted: we know the identity of the murderer at the outset; there are no 'imagined facts' to add to the murder itself; no
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character grows, learns, realises, or changes in any way; the 'aiders and abetters' make only the briefest appearances and contribute nothing to the plot. She apparently intended for 'blood' (Wolf's, the nanny's) to tie things together, but it's impossible to see any coherence in the different 'blood stories'. This is basically a book in which wooden characters move around for no discernible literary reason. Sometimes those characters meet each other by utter, unbelievable coincidence – and then nothing is made of the meeting. Long passages of dull exposition. The writing is lazy, and worse, breezy. Every other book by Muriel Spark is better than this one.
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LibraryThing member RandyMetcalfe
What is Muriel Spark doing in this novel? On the surface it appears to be a fictional account of the real-life absconder, Lord Lucan, the infamous British murderer. Here he is living in Paris with a near-double. Both of them have sought the help of a psychiatrist. Though it quickly emerges that
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they’ve sought her aid with the aim of blackmail since she is herself an absconder, having run a fraudulent stigmata-based cure-all. Blood, certainly, abounds. And everyone is either aiding or abetting or positively chasing but without a real desire to capture. If it wasn’t so absurdly odd and funny, it would be just odd. Of course, since this is Muriel Spark, it is entirely possible that it is far, far cleverer than I’ve comprehended. And possibly even funnier.

It seems impossible not to recommend this novel even if I remain utterly bemused by it.
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LibraryThing member TTAISI-Editor
Great story, told in Spark’s classic, spare style.

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