MADAME SOLARIO (374 pp.)−/Anonymous&−Viking ($3.95).
After observing the new guest, the hotel doctor remarked ominously: "Geologists speak of faults when they mean weaknesses in the crust of the earth that cause earthquakes . . . There are people like 'faults' who are a weakness in the fabric of society; there is disturbance and disaster wherever they are."
Subject of his observation: the beautiful, slightly mysterious "woman with a past" who appears, unannounced, amid the pastel parasols of a fashionable resort, bringing with her a whiff of evil−that exquisite cliche beloved by turn-of-the-century authors from...