MOOD AND MYSTERY

THE BEST THING ABOUT BRADFORD MORROW'S WHODUNIT IS ITS GRAND BACKDROP OF THE AMERICAN WEST

Author: By Gail Caldwell, Globe Staff

Date: SUNDAY, February 2, 1997

Page: N19

Section: Books

Like its predecessor ``Trinity Fields,'' which was set in New Mexico, ``Giovanni's Gift'' belongs to the West: to its vast skies and towering laws, to the land's Edenic promise that can turn spooky and pernicious at the drop of the sun. Morrow knows how creeks flow and how roads wash out and how valleys, if you walk far enough, become mountain paths; it is this patience, this careful and palpable grasp of the land, that results in such a fully imagined world. And it was this element that both compelled and accompanied me through the twists and turns of story in Morrow's fourth novel. ``Giovanni's Gift'' is part familial saga, part small-town whodunit, but even the more questionable aspects of plot are elevated by the grand backdrop of the Rockies.

``Giovanni's Gift'' is narrated by a young itinerant named Grant Morgan, the son of a mid-level diplomat, whose overriding childhood memory is ``the blur, the smudge,'' of his parents' wandering among foreign postings. Now in his 30s, with two failed marriages and a couple of translating jobs behind him, Grant is languishing in Rome -- still waiting for the concept of home to give his life definition. When his beloved Aunt Edme calls from her ranch in the West, a place called Ash Creek, Grant is all too ready to hear the trouble in her voice as an invitation. His mission delivered to him, he abandons the pensiones of a mostly make-believe life for the mountain valleys of a remembered one.

For Grant spent his summers here in Ash Creek, where Edme and her architect husband, Henry Fulton, had built their own version of paradise: a house nestled high in the Rockies, on a former working ranch that they've downscaled over the years into a quieter, pastoral haven. But in recent months, Henry and Edme have awakened in the night to a cruel interloper, someone terrorizing them with horrific noises and ominous deeds. Once Grant appears, the night visits, instead of abating, seem to worsen -- even Henry's sacrosanct studio, where he works on his architectural models, is destroyed. When Henry and Grant discover a note flapping on a fencepost, bearing the dark imperative to ``tell the truth,'' Henry implores his nephew not to mention it. Where we once had anonymous harassment, now we have personal vendetta.

And plenty of people with the history and character to execute it. ``Giovanni's Gift'' is named after the deceased caretaker of the ranch, an Italian immigrant named Giovanni Trentas, and it is his beloved memory (and odd death) that leads Grant on a quest to uncover the sequestered sorrows of the place. Oh, and Giovanni's beloved daughter: Helen Trentas, all grown up and gorgeous, appears at Ash Creek bearing wine and all sorts of intrigue; quicker than you can say ``third time around,'' Grant is following Helen around town.

``Giovanni's Gift'' is full of questions, some of them standard-issue gumshoe and some of them larger and less answerable. Central to the first category are the contents of a cigar box Edme gives Grant, an old treasure chest of Giovanni's where he hid the clues to the past. Every relationship within 20 miles of Ash Creek presents its own mystery, from the identity of Helen's mother to the true motives of the treacherous town developer. Henry's taciturn ways and Edme's dignified silence only enhance this vague eeriness, until Grant must rely solely upon instinct and good intentions to help him find his way. That, and a few dei ex machina that feel as forced out as Hope must have been, fleeing the security of Pandora's box.

Which is, after all, the main myth recalled here; Grant wanders about with Hawthorne's ``The Wonder Book for Boys and Girls'' under his arm, trying to make sense of the unleashed plagues and demons of his present plight. Some of Morrow's mythological invocations are charming and even occasionally wise, as when Grant comments upon the will of silent gods, or the notion that ``gods never learn because they always emerge unscathed.'' But too often motive follows opportunity by a ragged mile in ``Giovanni's Gift,'' so that one is continually processing catch-up narrative and fait-accompli explanations -- all of them delivered by a first-person narrator, beholden to the old ``As-I-later-learned'' device in order to know what he knows. These are technical clunkers, and they act to impede the flow of Morrow's novel like molasses poured into a mountain creek. What seems more detrimental, at least from the gumshoe perspective, is that the plot revelations are almost no surprise at all.

But I don't think Morrow cared much about the whodunit aspects of ``Giovanni's Gift.'' This is a novel that wants to be about the promise of home and the petty cruelties of little men -- about love and fear and the tyranny of ownership. In that manner it strives greatly, and sometimes succeeds. Put off by the arch quality of Morrow's self-conscious protagonist (and Grant's lofty sense of his own loftiness), I was nonetheless touched by the heart of the novel and the great regard of its creator for the land and sky. During one night ride home, the moon looks for all the world to Grant and Edme as though they might be able to reach up and run their fingers across ``its dusty face.'' Thanks to Morrow's powers of description, I could almost see them trying.