The tongue-in-cheek touch, the wry wit just beneath her heroine's frantic final plight, make Isabelle Holland's novels a great deal of fun for sophisticated readers. [In "Moncrieff"] the mysterious old house is in Brooklyn Heights (very aptly and authentically described), the damsel in distress knows damn well she is sometimes behaving foolishly, and she has a most engaging querulous small son,… able to take with a great deal of style his nervous mother's admission that her husband was not his father…. Ms. Holland does a neat job of putting it all together, and as always with that underlying sense of humor that distinguishes her work.