SOURCE: A review of One Deadly Summer, in Newsweek, Vol. XCV, No. 26, June 30, 1980, p. 68.

Strouse is an author and editor, whose books include Alice James: A Biography (1980). In the following review, she comments on the way Japrisot constructs characters and plot in One Deadly Summer.

This compelling new tale by the author of The Sleeping-Car Murders is set in a tiny village, population 143, near the Combes Pass in the south of France. Told in the four voices of its central characters, it takes place in the summer of 1976 but reaches back 21 years, to the winter of 1955, for the key to its mystery.

The main narrator [in One Deadly Summer] is Fiorimondo Montecciari, commonly known as "Ping-Pong," the son of a southern Italian emigrant who came to France on foot pulling a player piano behind him. Ping-Pong works in a garage and lusts after "Elle" (short for Eliane and...