There is a tradition of novels whose power resides in allusiveness and suggestion rather than story-telling. It is as part of this tradition that Francis King intends Dead Letters. His aim is to indicate, rather than to tell, to leave things in the shadows or off-stage, rather than to expose them to the glare of sunlight; or, like a De Chirico painting, to give them the mythic resonance of a train in the distance.

The plot is unremarkable. In the 1970s, an Australian on his European trip meets a faded Italian aristocrat in Sicily and accepts his hospitality. The Australian stays longer than he meant to, partly because of the chance to restore the Prince's ancient Bugatti, and partly because the Prince comes to rely on him. But he chafes under the obligation, so he moves on.

Beneath this simple structure lies a whole range of issues. Prince Stefano has no children, and, like his crumbling ancestral home, his line is coming to an ignominious end. Steve, the mechanic, comes from an unhappy background with an abusive father, and he has difficulty loving anybody. The Prince has been writing a book for years, and Steve's presence galvanizes him into finishing it. It subsequently becomes an important work. (Steve sees a movie version of it back home in Australia, and he receives a letter from an academic asking for his recollections of Prince Stefano.) These are the shadows which King throws, filling them out with a host of minor events: a family retainer is killed by the Mafia, Steve repairs a vacuum cleaner for a friend of Stefano's wife, a louche playwright interrupts an agreeable lunch in a restaurant.

More problematic is whether King brings it all off. We can read between the lines, but is there really anything there? We never learn anything about Prince Stefano's book. The novel draws on Lampedusa's life, but in an uncertain and unresolved way. We never know what it is about Steve that changes everything for the Prince. Several times he murmurs that there is much he would like to say, but he cannot bring himself to do so. Then he has a stroke and is unable to say anything. Only after his death can he speak. He sends the boy a handful of postcards bearing gnomic observations, a one-hand-clapping conversation which adds up to an oblique declaration of love. It is not clear whether this love is sexual—Steve is beautiful, but he is not otherwise a very interesting young man—or just a longing for youth and vigour as contrasted with his own decline.

The major theme of the novel is the tension between love and obligation. Steve discovers that he did, after all, love Prince Stefano, and he later wishes he could feel more for his own family. In the end, King's sensibility is simply too delicate. In his reluctance to pin down the details, he has simply let them go. Several times, the Prince almost touches Steve, but draws back. Bringing that issue to a head, or revealing how Steve helped the Prince's book, might have given Dead Letters the focus it needed.