Last Friends / Jane Gardam 205 pp.

The final title in the Old Filth trilogy mops up the story of Filth, his wife Betty, and his enemy, friend, and wife's love Veneering.  The focus shifts to Veneering, just dead from a fall while vacationing in Malta, and alternates with the story of his early childhood and that of the few stragglers the plot has left behind:  Fred Fiscal-Smith, an attorney and hanger-on to the group, and Dulcie, the woolly widow of Betty's godfather, the judge known as Pastry Willy.  Terry Veneering's story is as well drawn as that of Filth and Betty; he's born in the north of England to a coal-peddler and a crippled Russian acrobat.  He is doomed (or fated) to love one woman his whole life who happens to be married to a man he detests, Old Filth himself.  But much of this novel is a sort of fade-out on the group, telling of the last days of Dulcie and Fiscal-Smith who almost by definition are less vital to the story.  And I was disappointed to note quite a few editorial fumbles this time, in particular a lot of bizarre uses of commas.  (Yes, I am a nit-picky ass, and not especially gifted with commas myself, but I must call these things as I see them.)