89. Aiding and Abetting by Muriel Spark

A patient arrives at the office of Hildegard Wolff, a German psychoanalyst who lives and practices in Paris. He claims to be the missing Lord Lucan, who caused a scandal in Britain in 1974 when he killed his children’s nanny and attempted to kill his wife. The only problem is that Dr. Wolff already has a patient claiming to be the missing Lord Lucan. Wolff herself is running from a previous life – she used to be Beate Pappenheim, the famous stigmatic from Munich. She used her menstrual blood to fake the stigmata and had to flee when she was exposed as a fake. Which of her patients is the real Lord Lucan?

Written when Spark was 82, this novel was based on the real Lord Lucan case that filled British tabloids for years. Many assumed that Lucan was still alive and was aided by aristocratic friends who helped him hide around the world and supplied him with money and avenues for plastic surgery. He was declared legally dead in 1999, and much was written about the case again. Not as good as some of her other works, this novel is unpredictable, at times funny, and at times absurd. I listened to it on audiobook and enjoyed the narration of it quite a bit.