In the novel, Muriel Spark combines a serious look at English attitudes toward life and death with a satirical treatment of love affairs and a humorous twist on the classic mystery story. Staying largely within realist conventions, Spark leads the reader into multi-layered intrigues but resists facile solutions to the problematic situations she creates. By using a central device, the mysteriously threatening telephone call, she pulls together a diverse array of characters who seem to have something in common. She makes us wonder, however, if that call is real or symbolic, as death is inevitable for everyone and receiving the call may represent those individuals’s heightened awareness.

One character who gets the call is police Inspector Mortimer, now retired, who either cannot or will not solve the mystery of identifying the caller; instead, he hides the facts that he himself receives such calls. When one central character, Lettie Colston, is murdered, the story apparently turns to investigating her death. Instead of revealing her killer, the search leads down an entirely different path: the long-lost husband of Lisa Brooke (Lisa is the recently-deceased former mistress of Lettie’s brother) is uncovered. In this, Spark adds a Gothic “madwoman in the attic” twist to what had seemed a very contemporary novel. In addition, that discovery and the husband’s subsequent death enriches the obviously undeserving housekeeper, Mabel Pettigrew, who is the novel’s most unpleasant character.

Goodness rarely triumphs in Spark’s world, as all the characters have something to hide. Charmian, whose mental troubles and difficult recovery from a stroke elicit the reader’s sympathy, turns out to have conducted an extra-marital affair for years. Her husband, Godfrey, is arguably even less appealing given his propensity to indulge in sexual fetishes, so the reader accepts her decision to leave him. The contrast between the likely end to her life in a private, well-appointed facility and the end for her former companion, Jean Taylor, in a public institution effectively reduces Charmian’s appeal even further. Jean, long ago rejected by her poet boyfriend, is the only character who seems likely to age gracefully and accept death without bitterness. Jean concludes that the caller is Death itself, but readers are left to wonder if we are meant to accept this “solution” at face value.