Books: Confidence Trickster

THE GO-AWAY BIRD (215 pp.)—Muriel Spark—Lipplncoff ($3.75).

Sooner or later, readers of Muriel Spark's fiction come to understand that they have been hornswoggled in the very nicest way. The tactics of this talented Scot are essentially those of the confidence man. The Spark reader is entertained by an apparently straightforward, witty story—until the moment arrives when the rug is twitched from beneath his feet, or when a corps of spooks, bogies and supernatural agents start moving the furniture about, playing the devil with the shapes of common objects.

In the first of...