The marriage of William and Grace Handle has become a matter of amicable habit; they have constructed their working lives so that they spend whole days hardly talking or seeing each other except at mealtimes. He is the lead violin of a distinguished string quartet; she a painstaking painter of flowers for a children"s reference book. Easy Silenceis a book about the sudden craziness of mid-life crisis--William develops a hopeless crush on the new young viola player who has joined the quartet and conceives the idea that, were he to murder his wife, Bonnie would fall into his arms and they would make music together forever. Angela Huth"s real achievement in all this is to make clear how silly and how dangerous William"s fantasies are, without him ever losing our sympathy: "Bonnie had poured her soul into the music, sending messages too strong to be ignored. She had hugged him, told him she wanted them to play alone together again. So many glorious signs unsettled him ... Suddenly, William was able to contemplate the fact quite calmly; he would have to murder his wife." William"s condition would be comic were it not all so desperately sad and suspenseful. Grace too is spending too much time with a dangerous younger person--Lucien, a miserable young man who lives down the road with his mother, takes to dropping in for coffee rather too often and William"s expensive cuff-links go missing. This is a novel of hard-pressed middle-aged life-- comedy with wolves howling round the door.--Roz Kaveney