Breaches of etiquette come thick and fast in Piers Paul Read's The Villa Golitsyn, from insulting one's guests at dinner to talking about money—'it's too middle-class'—from drunkenness to incest and the seduction of a minor. Read has so many talents as a novelist that one is always expecting him to write a really first-class book and always feeling surprised as well as disappointed when he fails to live up to his promise. He is an entertaining storyteller. He is as interested in ideas as in people. He can explore other countries and cultures and seem quite at home in them. He plays well so many instruments; it is a pity that he falls down on the orchestration. Also, he is far too easily tempted into introducing the luridly melodramatic. (p. 95)

At the beginning of [The Villa Golitsyn] it seems as if the theme will be the...