Helen MacInnes has been providing literate entertainment for readers who fancy cultured British chat with their manslaughter. Her formula has seldom varied: civilized travelogue plus melodramatic espionage plus a generous dusting of powdered-sugar sex. In her later books (has she been told that readers of thrillers want lots and lots of action?) this basic plot has sometimes grown so complicated that one is hard put to figure out the details. "The Venetian Affair" is a case in point. Despite a straightforward beginning, the intrigue soon becomes as ingeniously convoluted as a baroque facade….

Devotees of this author's work will know how to skip the purple patches, the political sermonizing, most of the romance. I enjoyed "The Venetian Affair." I'd like Miss MacInnes even better if she had more concision…. A question of taste, I suppose.

John L. Brown, "Bang-Bang All The Way," in The New York Times Book...