LAST MOVEMENT

To heavenly Helikon—a cross between Tanglewood and Jack LaLanne in the Greek isles—come aspiring stage designer "Mike" Meiklejohn, with her recuperating mum, and celebrity-playwright Lady Julia, with her brand-new, sunstroked second husband. While seaweed treatments and string quartets ensue, Mike frets over the family secret that her mother's too weak to discuss (what shocking deed of her long-gone father triggered her sister's suicide?), and Julia frets over the strange, sadistic behavior of the millionaire American hubby she barely knows. If you can't guess Mike's dad's mystery, you're behind the times (hint: "That's no lady: that's my father"); and the romantic fadeout (Mike and Helikon's Turkish medical director) seems a bit glib. But, until a steambath-boiled body and a tiresome kidnapping rev things up unnecessarily near the end, Aiken's knack for controlled moistness and tenderly-applied pressure do the trick—especially when likable Mike is narrating. A passing fancy too smooth to pass up.