The short dirk in the hands of Muriel Spark has always been a deadly weapon, said The New York Times, and never more so than in The Abbess of Crewe. An elegant little fable about intrigue, corruption, and electronic surveillance, The Abbess of Crewe is set in an English Benedictine convent. Steely and silky Abbess Alexandra (whose aristocratic tastes run to pate, fine wine, English poetry, and carpets of amorous green) has bugged the convent, and rigged her election. But the cat gets out of the bag, and-plunged into scandal-the serene Abbess faces a Vatican inquiry.