NEW NOVELS
Bodies politic
MATTHEW COADY
Send Him Victorious Douglas Hurd and Andrew Osmond (Collins 25s) The Dust and the Heat Michael Gilbert (Hodder and Stoughton 21s) Cargo of Eagles Margery Allingham (Chatto and Windus 21s) The Hounds of Sparta Barry Norman (W. H. Allen 18s) The political thriller—the suspense story centred on Whitehall and Westminster—is oddly under- developed. Richard Hannay and Commander James Bond may get their orders from SW!, but their adversaries lurk elsewhere: in the heather, in dimly-lit eastern bazaars or at the baccarat tables of Las Vegas or Le Touquet. Yet men can feel as desperate in the placid half-mile that lies between Nelson's Column and the House of Commons as they can—in the sewers of Istanbul. The mislaid folder, the civil service mandarin's indiscreet aside, the ministerial gaffe at an embassy reception, may all be made to seem as lethal, in their fashion, as cyanide. They might, that is, if the skilful thriller writer understood his Whitehall as well as he understands his craft.
Mr William Haggard, one of our most accomplished entertainers, who knows both, grasped this long ago. Mr Douglas Hurd and Mr Andrew Osmond are in the process of so doing. In Send Him Victorious, they project us into the late 'seventies. A Conservative government faces renewed trouble in Rho- desia. A multi-racial settlement, reached it appears in 1968, has been torn up and power illegally seized by the extremist White Brother- hood. Britain, under pressure from a restive United Nations, is preparing to send in the troops. In public, there is disorder. In private, neo-fascist plotters scheme. To cries of 'Up the Whites, Grenadiers murder an RSM on the parade ground, a bomb explodes in the Strand, blood runs on Balliol's doorstep and the Prime Minister is assaulted as he speaks to the nation on TV. A coup d'etat is in the wind. Both the crown and a cabinet as odd as that of Dr Caligari are involved. What, the reader might wonder, were the Opposition doing?
For all that, the authors' powers of inven- tion are considerable. If there are moments when the plotting smacks of the Sexton Blake Library in the 'thirties, they bring it off with style. The trick lies in the documentary approach, the coating of surface realism. They know how politicians talk, how diplomats react and government departments work. Still, though excellent on the machinery, they remain a little short on the sense of menace. And at the end of it all we are left to speculate: Could it happen here? Surely, not like this.
Mr Michael Gilbert understands the thriller theory to perfection. He once wrote an essay about it. In The Dust and the Heat he applies some, though not all, of the precepts there laid down. His background here is a near-ruined pharmaceutical firm and his 'hero' a none-too- scrupulous ex-officer on the make. A series of shoddy trickeries are taken apart with Mr Gilbert's usual deftness.
For Margery Allingham, Cargo of Eagles must be seen as a regretted farewell. The book was completed, following her death, by her husband and illustrator Youngman Carter. That sinse of threat which she generated so well for so long broods over the marshes as a young American scholar faces hostile villagers full of secrets. The ageing but indestructible Albert Campion waits in the wings, then strikes. His old admirers will scarce forbear to cheer. .Must this, one wonders, be Campion's fare- well, too? Mr Youngman Carter should feel encouraged to try his hand alone.
Finally, in The Hounds of Sparta, Mr Barry Norman concerns himself with a Soviet assassin, a top-flight British scientist and a secret ser- vice amateur. Men die and security is at stake. Yet, however grim the business in hand, Mr Norman dispatches it with a diverting light- ness. The result is readable. There are scenes, though, that make one wonder just what Mr Norman might achieve if he were to write a comic romp.
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