October Crime
Patrick Cosgrave
I had better start this with a warning to writers of crime fiction, and particularly to two of my favourite women. I am getting very fed up with the crime story that depends for its fibre on the unravelling of the hidden tensions, the dark secrets, and the hitherto unspoken inadequacies of ordinary people. Granted, Patricia Highsmith's Edith's Diary and Ruth Rendell's Judgment in Stone were masterpieces. Margaret Yorke's Tile Cost of Silence (Hutchinson £3.75) and Celia Fremlin's Spider Orchid (Gollancz £3.75) stand comparison with the best. Mrs Yorke writes of murder in a small town — the murder of the obese and crippled wife of a shopkeeper having an affair with the local teacher. The reader knows whodunit all along, but the crime sets up waves in the community which are brutally (and, I thought, unnessarily so) explored by the police and delicately by the writer.
Small communities, small people are likewise the concern of Roderic Jeffries in Troubled Deaths (Collins £3.25), which has,. among others, the murder of an unpleasant expatriate among the English community in Mallorca; of Jon Cleary's Vortex (Collins, 43.95); and of Michael Allen's Spence in Petal Park (Constable, £3.95). In each case, though, there is an extra dimension to the story. Mr Jeffries's detective Alvarez becomes warmer and more attractive — much more so than Maigret, whom he resembles — with every book, and the lore and looks of Mallorca are, as ever, beautifully done. The Alvarez stories now occupy a favourite place on my shelves. Mr Cleary can never go wrong when he is describing nature, and his approaching typhoon is one of the best features he has done, as his New York cop turned sheriff is one of his most beguiling characters. Mr Allen's policeman, Spence, is the hero of the best police procedure novel I have read for years: he manages to make even the most routine detail of investigation tingle and jump off the page into your fascinated mind. Each of the three Poses a delicate moral problem. For Mr Jeffries it is, when should murder not be Punished? For Mr Cleary it is the problem of defining the importance of a sordid murder when at any moment the whole town may be wiped out in the storm: every line is r.ense, and reeking with doubt and human For Mr Allen the problem is guilty devotion (of the suspects) weighed against alTioral irresponsibility (of the victim, one of the nastiest for some time). Each of the trio iS distinguished. Still, I am very partial to a dash of colour and romance. Normally, so far as I am concerned, Evelyn Anthony can do no wrong. But I was disappointed with The Silver Falcon (Hutchinson £3.95), a glossy account of the charming widow of an American racing millionaire who, in seeking to fulfil his dying wish of winning the Derby, runs across his questionable son and a bunch of the most improbable racing crooks. All is well — including the psychopathic murders and the brilliant frame of an innocent man — until Miss Anthony gets on to the horses; and, unfortunately, she spends most of the book with them: her crimes are unlikely, her animals unconvincing. In order to be sunk thoroughly and happily in a completely other world I have to turn to The Brides of Friedberg by Gwendoline Butler (Macmillan £3.75). Since she took up the Victorian and Edwardian periods Mrs Butler has not put a foot wrong. Here another of her delightful, intelligent and plucky heroines finds herself adrift in Wilhelmine Germany (the Kaiser hints at dirty weekends to her) investigating, and being suspected of, murder. Every detail of that grim period in a grim country, and particularly of high but barren aristocratic life, is rendered with utter conviction and invested.with brooding menace.
The attraction of Mrs Butler's girls (and, usually, of Miss Anthony's) is that though they are, within their class and period, ordinary, crisis brings out extraordinary qualities: it is this larger than life element which finally makes the adventure story. The accountant in Arthur Maling's Schroeder's • Game (Gollancz £3.95), who investigates a disappearing partner, murder and one of the best frauds in crime since Emma Lathen started, is a capable man, but an ordinary one, who rises to an occasion. One can, of course, always add to hero and plot either an unusual skill or an exotic environment. One of the most daring and successful examples of the latter recently has been Ellis Peters's A Morbid Taste for Bones (Macmillan £3.50) in which a wordly-wise mediaeval monk solves fraud and murder in the course of a hunt for a saint's remains on the Welsh border. Gripping and knowledgable this shows yet again Miss Peters's astonishing range. For unusual expertise one can get no better than Fletch, the art critic/crook hero of Gregory Mcdonald's Confess, Fletch (Gollancz £4.25) in which our hero, in traditional form, finds a murdered girl in his flat.
It is possible, though without trying for super-heroes, to combine all these things — common man becoming uncommon under pressure; strange and bewitching environment; special but plausible skills. Lionel Davidson — who, for my money, is quite simply the best thriller writer around — does it with every book, and always everything is new. His first novel, The Night of Wenceslas (skulduggery in post-war Prague), as well as others A Long Way to Shilo (Arabs v Israelis over the lost menorah of Jerusalem), Smith's Gazelle (Arab and Jewish boy secretly preserving rare quadruped), The Rose of Tibet (English adventurer embroiled with sex goddess in Tibet as the Chinese invade) and Making Good Again (the nature of Nazism unveiled in hunt for reparations) are all available from Penguin, a fact which justifies the existence of the firm. But if you want to try something new look at a remarkable and brilliant first novel, Fire in the Barley (Constable, £3.75) by Frank Parrish, about a superb poacher here investigating an ingenious and frightening agricultural protection racket. The bluff and double bluff, the magnificent understanding of countryside, the complex skill of the detective, are all entrancing. I hope for many more Dan Mallett adventures.
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