David Abden is the scion of a well-to-do Scottish family, a con man whose scams once landed him in jail. Almost by accident he enters the perfume trade, eventually becoming sales manager and lover to Mme Shona, a mysterious Russian cosmetics magnate. A series of events, including an unexpected inheritance and an unsatisfying marriage, lead Abden to make hard choices about his life's direction. Abden is not an easy character to like in the beginning, and several hundred pages of his smug, exceedingly clever point of view make for more than a few tedious passages. Yet the writing is solid, the characterization good, and Abden's emotional maturity is convincingly portrayed and ultimately affecting. ( )