Love and Betrayal

Though it includes a murder, a search for the killer and an attempted killing, Maddox's second novel (after Llantarnam) is not nearly as exciting as it sounds. It's a less than suspenseful story of the private lives of the disjointed family of a privileged young man named Peter Spaulding, who is murdered in oil-rich Midland, Tex., in the summer of 1949. The murder does not occur until the end of Chapter 5, by which time readers have glimpsed Peter's devoted and pregnant wife, his memories of the East-Coast socialite he loved and his post-WWII quest for a quick fortune. Lathrop and Nina, Peter's long-divorced parents, come to Midland for the funeral. Lathrop, still obsessively in love with Nina (she left him for a wealthy, dishonest Brazilian) is Maddox's most affecting and convincing character, and the story focuses on him for a while as he stays behind to find out who killed his son. Maddox succeeds in bringing her characters to life midway through the narrative, after a number of chapters full of simplistic prose (""She spelled nothing but trouble"") and soap-operatic plotting. The time and setting ring true, but Maddox's story suffers from a curious lack of style and cohesiveness. The solution of Peter's murder comes in an anticlimactic report from a private detective, and an epilogue, set years later, is an awkward appendage. Domestic rights: Mary Jane Ross; foreign rights: Daniel Bial Literary Agency. (Mar.)