Summer crimes
atrick Cosgrave
'Unpretentious and 'straightforward' are hDatronising words to use in a review. I would i, ,ave to say something like 'John Buchan s "milers are vastly superior to those most Pular today' to convey accurately the kind (3.,,f Praise want to lavish on Tony Kenrick s ',he Seven Day Soldiers (Michael Joseph n5). A group of overdraft-burdened busis-nessme.1 think of a foolproof way of filching fisnle money from a Swiss account. It works. s "eY try again. They find themselves pos(less° of a vast fortune belonging to a most vngerous man and hire the superbly conhirleing Sergeant Cambell to train them to b5nt. Unpretentious, straightforward it is, 41-it utterly gripping, and reminiscent of uehan at his most exciting. H,.A similar straightforwardness marks (qu'gil h Tracy's excellent Death in Reserve T,°Itanoz £3.50). The unpretentious Tom epsh..tanbnieirs, director of a scientific research ment, and the devious George c'entx of Security, face the problem of a b.adman in possession of a deadly plague r:heillus, who proposes to hold Britain. to sav-scull. An ancient theme, you may fat.rly ch',' but Mr Tracy has rung entertaining abgi nges on it: the girl, for example, is detect Y ambiguous; the bitter passions of . eillee are as compellingly drawn as in 6 Snow ; and the humour is delightful. I an :,Praise unpretentiousness in the thriller, 1e Unpretentiousness certain in my attitude to simplicity the e,detective or crime story. But unease at i tectQuSenee of the classic, clue-ridden deteik.ve story abates in the face of the excelerirhe so often manifested in modern tales of Gwendolen Butler has just produced jria'er Victorian story of crime and in for pile ( i a successor to the brilliant A Co.ffin I/lin:n(1°ra) in The Vesey Inheritance (Mac 'n £3.50), The tension of the story
(about the adventures of nineteen-year-old Errol Vesey, maid in waiting to Queen Victoria. pursuing from an elegant home, but through the cesspits of London, a malignant and mysterious half-brother) arises from the contrast between the stately and simple sheen of the heroine's narrative and the half-glimpsed passions and hatreds, beneath the surface of her experience. So delectable is Mrs Butler's writing and characterisation, so fine and sure her touch, that she must be dubbed the Jane Austen of the crime story.
A more complex—almost a more adult— talent is, however, that of P. D. James, whose hero is Superintendent Adam Dalgleish, in his spare time a poet of distinction (shades of Roderick Alleyn), and a remote and private personality. By some alchemy of modern publishing commerce Hamish Hamilton have published, in their attractive Fingerprint Series, three of Miss James's novels which originally made their appearance under the Faber imprint. They are Unnatural Causes, .4 Mind to Murder, and Cover her Face (each at £3.50). All are outstanding, and effectively employ the detective form ironically to comment on aspects of modern professional morality. A cruder moralist is the Cockney iconoclast James Hazell, private eye creation of P. B. Yuji!. in whose latest adventure, Hazel! and the Menacing Jester (Macmillan £3.25) the hero confronts the problem of an increasingly sinister series of practical jokes being played on an agreeable but shady businessman who has become involved in the porn racket. Still far from Raymond Chandler's Bay City, Hazell's London is complete and convincing in its seediness--a living environment with its own rules of order, but separate from the Britain outside A not dissimilar fictional Oxford has been created by crossword specialist Colin Dexter, whose second detective story featuring Chief Inspector Morse----surely the most mercurial detective ever—is Last Seen Wearing (Macmillan £2.95). Here Morse is compelled against his will to investigate the case of a missing schoolgirl and, principally by giving free rein to his undisciplined intuition, uncovers a sordid web of guilt and deceit. Mr Dexter's technique is not merely to ignore, but actually to flout the classical rules, for his detective is usually even more puzzled than his reader. But there is a weird compulsiveness about his art, as Morse muses fantastically on his way to unveiling evil.
From the other side of the fence of crime Patricia Highsmith's morbid but charming Tom Ripley repeats his career of murder and fraud in Penguin's reprint of all three Ripley novels--The Talented Mr Ripley, Ripley Underground and Ripley's Game (each 70p). More than anybody else in this review Miss Highsmith, who is the finest analyst of the criminal mind now writing, has that ability to present an utterly smooth, utterly simple sequence of surface experiences--all agreeable----and to frighten and unman the reader with the irruption of crime and violence.
Previous page
