DEAD MAN IN THE SILVER MARKET (203 pp.)—Aubrey Menen—Scribner ($3).
"Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble," lamented Job. But trouble fairly brims over when a man is born, as was Aubrey Menen, of an Irishwoman and a Hindu, is registered as a native Briton and educated like a true-born Englishman. Beset by so many distorting mirrors, such a man is bound to see the baffling jigsaw puzzle of his identity with either tears or laughter. Novelist Menen (The Prevalence of Witches, The Duke of Gallodoro) chooses...