Our Gifted Son

by Dorothy Baker. Houghton Mifflin, $2.75.

Mexico’s Pacific coast: a mother’s death while her son was abroad; a style capable of suggesting infinite subtleties and sometimes irritatingly mannered — these provide the mood, mystery, and literary flavor of Dorothy Baker’s third novel. The plot is of the “conjuring trick” variety. You are introduced to a situation in which something is amiss, and to several promising characters — a young Mexican pianist, his tyrannic father, his former American governess, who wears her forty years with alluring chic and is said to be a lush. Their conduct, their talk, continually promise a revelation, disclose nothing, but still hold you. Seldom have private lives remained so very private until the last chapter. The suspense turns out to have been built on something of a fraud, and the climax is rank melodrama. By this time, though, it doesn’t much matter. You have had several hours’ fascinating reading.