Books: Sacred & Profane

THIRD ACT IN VENICE—Sylvia Thompson—Little, Brown ($2.50).

Great novelists live with their characters; lesser ones pay calls. Not a great novelist but a good one, Sylvia Thompson is an adept at taking her leave, never embarrasses her characters or her readers by staying with them too long at a stretch. Third Act in Venice, her latest (and ninth) novel, is a brilliant exhibition of her episodic power, her knowledge of how to be absolutely tactful though relatively true.

If Author Thompson had lingered long with any of the people in Third Act in Venice,...