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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)
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Has this ever been filmed? It should be. But not by Martin Scorsese or
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.
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.
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.
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.
It seems impossible not to recommend this novel even if I remain utterly bemused by it.