Books: Highlander’s Fling

FRIENDS AND LOVERS (367 pp.)—Helen Maclnnes—Little, Brown ($2.75).

U.S. mystery fans will remember Helen Maclnnes as an author who put feminine curves on international espionage. In Above Suspicion and Assignment in Brittany, she created a creepy, spy-laden atmosphere where even secret agents feared to tread. In her latest novel, Friends and Lovers, she has abandoned the thriller for a ladies’ magazine romance. Chief attraction: a headstrong Scottish lassie with her heart in the Highlands. She burns the torch for a callow young Oxonian, but its glow is no more than a soulless fluorescence, shedding little light, no heat.