[In Quiet As a Nun, Lady Antonia Fraser] has created a suspenseful story, though without much success at masking the outcome. Her private investigator, Jemima Shore, of whom we at no point get any real description, seems to be an alter ego of Antonia Fraser herself. Murder in a convent would seem to be a sure-fire recipe for a thriller, especially when combined with secret passages, ghostly walks and child-abduction. But the thrills (at least as felt by this reviewer) are at best only mild, and the potentially fascinating background is treated with such unfortunate superficiality as to be disturbing rather than contributive….

There is a strange incongruity between the personality of the ultra-modern narrator-heroine, a kind of British Barbara Walters, a nationally known TV personality, and the medieval ambience of the Convent of Blessed Eleanor, where she does her sleuthing.

The strength of the book lies in...