Detection, Mystery and Horror
The Hidden and the Hunted. By Howard Swiggett. (Heinemann.
81-. 6d.) ' The Gollancz Detective Omnibus. (Gollancz. 65.)
THIS week we are really in luck. There is a detective story of such high quality that it will surely become a classic, another detective story of hors de side originality, and a first-class spy-thriller. In fact, it's almost a rainbow-and-a-cuckoo's-song week.
The perfectly admirable detective story is The People Against O'Hara by Eleazar Lipsky. The story opens in New York at night —" Throughout the city the police network . . . lay ready for the first act of violence to be reported." This turns out to be murder near the fish-market, and for the murder young O'Hara is arrested. The police genuinely believe him guilty, and Mr. Curtayne, his lawyer, genuinely believes him innocent. Mr. Curtayne, once a lawyer of brilliant reputation, has lately lost too many cases. He is poor and old and ill, and in desperately trying to save O'Hara he finds himself discarding the most important thing remaining to him, his integrity. The characterisation in this book is brilliant. The lawyer is a masterpiece of consistent and moving invention, but so, onu lesser scale, are the forces of police and law who, with all their brutality and dishonesty, have still their own brand of final kindli- ness and decency. The detection itself is properly and honestly handled, and the total effect represents something new and important in detective fiction.
The original detective story is The Big Fish by Ronald Wills. Its locale is occupied Germany, its date the more.recent years of the Control Commission, and its murderee poor Emmy Bellayne, the unloved wife of masterful amorous Rex who has such a penchant for appointing dyed-in-the-wool Nazis to important positions. Clues being supplied with reasonable fairness, this book must rank as detection rather than thriller, but it competently combines many of the better qualities of both categories. Characters are cleverly sketched, and the organisational side of it, from the black market to the British Secret Service, is informatively and convincingly done. The last of the three snips, the first-class thriller, is Howard Swiggett's The Hidden and the Hunted. The plot is, of course, about documents and Russians and democracies, but the looks are well chosen and include Prague, Paris, Helsinki and Leyden, and the characters are quite a lot better than stock. There's a three- dimensional solution of code which is just too, too like the mathe- matical formulae in the Dome of Discovery, and the whole thing is well worth the setting aside of an idle hour. Now for The Rest, which, even if not up to these high standards,
are not at all to be sneezed at. Those who prefer real-life murders will enjoy Edgar Lustgarten's Defender's Triumph, the account of four famous defences by Edward Clarke, Marshall Hall, Patrick Hastings and Norman Birkett. It is a great pity that Mr. Lust- garten's style has become so flamboyantly journalese, and it is interesting that when writing about Sir Patrick Hastings, the least flamboyant of these counsel, Mr. Lustgarten's prose seem to quiet down in sympathy.
We Are For The Dark has noticeably a lovely title, and the six tales of horror it contains aro written in unexceptionable prose and placed in settings of classic possibilities. Unfortunately, what doesn't come off is horror. This reviewer gave it every chance, reading it at dead of night in an old house said to be haunted, but the flesh stayed uncrept, the hair lay flat. The stories are well worth reading as stories, but the horrific element is always too understressed to affect and almost too esoteric to be understood.
Even in the Best Families, a Nero Wolfe story, is neither better nor worse than one might expect, and perfectly adequate for a long train-journey. Series 4 of The Queen's Awards contains sixteen stories, some by masters, some by beginners, nearly all worth scrutiny by connoisseurs ; Ellery Queen writes an interesting introduction. Finally, the Gollancz Detective Omnibus, containing full-length novels by Crispin, Innes and Sayers, is at six shillings quite as much of a bargain as the publisher claims, though in the volume sent to me some pages were, unhappily, inserted upside-down.
ESTT1ER HOWARD.
Previous page
