A writer named Caroline Rose is persecuted by a 'typing ghost' who is writing a story about her, even as she composes her own novel. Meanwhile, her fiance, Lawrence Manders, discovers that his elderly grandmother has been involved in diamond-smuggling (with a bizarre crew that sent messages via carrier pigeon). THE COMFORTERS, Muriel Spark's first novel, was highly acclaimed in 1957, when it was published. Like several of her works, the act of writing — and, in particular, of writing this particular book — is part of the plot.

A man of devilish charm and enterprising spirit, Dougal Douglas is employed to revitalize the ailing firm of Meadows, Meade & Grindley. He succeeds, but not quite in the way his employer intended. Strange things begin to happen as Dougal exerts an uncanny influence on the inhabitants of Peckham Rye and brings lies, tears, blackmail and even murder into the lives of all he meets, from Miss Merle Coverdale, head of the typing pool, to Beauty, the resident femme fatale, and even Mr Druce, the unsuspecting Managing Director himself.

Lise has been driven to distraction by working in the same accountants' office for sixteen years. So she leaves everything behind her, transforms herself into a laughing, garishly-dressed temptress and flies abroad on the holiday of a lifetime. But her search for adventure, sex and the obsessional experience takes on a far darker significance as she heads on a journey of self-destruction. Infinity and eternity attend Lise's last terrible day in an unnamed southern city, as she meets her fate.

«In «Aiding and Abetting», the doyenne of literary satire has written a wickedly amusing and subversive novel around the true-crime case of one of England’s most notorious uppercrust scoundrels and the “aiders and abetters” who kept him on the loose. When Lord Lucan walks into psychiatrist Hildegard Wolf’s Paris office, there is one problem: she already has a patient who says he’s Lucan, the fugitive murderer who bludgeoned his children’s nanny in a botched attempt to kill his wife. As Dr. Wolf sets about deciding which of her patients, if either, is the real Lucan, she finds herself in a fierce battle of wills and an exciting chase across Europe. For someone is deceiving someone, and it may be the good doctor, who, despite her unorthodox therapeutic method (she talks mainly about her own life), has a sinister past, too. Exhibiting Muriel Spark’s boundless imagination and biting wit, «Aiding and Abetting» is a brisk, clever, and deliciously entertaining tale by one of Britain’s greatest living novelists.»