Household Hints

ARABESQUE (312 pp.)—Geoffrey Household—Little, Brown ($2.75).

Geoffrey Household is an Englishman with a quiet gift for telling tales. He made a success in 1939 with a story about a big game hunter's attempt to stalk Hitler with telescopic sights. After that book, Rogue Male,* he went to the Near East as an intelligence officer, seeing action in Greece and intrigue in Syria and Palestine.

Arabesque is mainly a pleasantly concocted adventure story. A bilingual beauty named Armande Herne, stranded in Beirut in 1941, piques the curiosity of both French and British Intelligence. Odd though it seems, she is neither a poule...