Crime compendium

When I was young I used to , hate detective and thriller fiction which did not have the same hero appearing in successive books. I have long, of course, got over this, and can appreciate the merits of the Patricia Highsmiths and the Pat Flowers as well as the next man. Nonetheless, I retain a hankering after the saga hero who appears in book after book, whether he is an adventurer like James Bond or the Saint, or a dull dog of a detective like Inspector Wexford or Superintendent Tibbett. There are, broadly speaking, two categories of such heroes, the slightly superhuman figures, like Bond or Sherlock Holmes; and the more ordinary men who, even if en dowed with great skills of one kind or another, remain the sort of chap you might actually have as a next door neighbour —

even Ngaio Marsh's Superintendent Alleyn or Michael Innes's.

Sir John Appleby fall into this category, although, of course, it is more readily filled by the end less proliferation of semi-anonymous professional detectives whose lack of identity I have been complaining about in recent weeks.

The urge to create distinctive hero characters is still very strong, and it is usually served , by giving the hero either unusual experience or skills, or an unusual history. Judson Philips, for example has invented a journalist hero, Peter Styles, who appears in The Vanishing Senator (Gollancz EI.80). Styles was himself once the victim of mindless violence on the part of some thugs, and lost a leg. All his adventures have built into them, therefore, a marked pre occupation with the insanity and moral irresponsibility of

modern America. In The Va

nishing Senator, militant activists kidnap a Senator and his companion (a political column

ist) and make impossible ransom demands. Styles is named

as go-between with the kidnappers and, through his association with an earlier case, becomes involved in a counterkidnapping as well. The story is exceptionally fast moving, and the action suitably brutal. But the resolution of the adventure is rushed and implausible, and I can't really believe in Peter Styles.

Helen Nielsen, in The Severed Key (Gollancz £1.90) has her lawyer detective Simon Drake, investigating the consequences of a 'plane crash in which a young starlet disappears. A private detective friend of his be

gins an investigation into the presence at the airport at the time of the crash of a mysterious millionaire playboy and a gang boss. The starlet's fiance is murdered, and there follows the killing of a young girl, of which the detective is accused. The action is also complicated by the presence of three young hippies, an older woman who is a friend of Drake's and plays an important part in the action, a black factotum of Drake's, and assorted policemen. Miss N ielsen's action is good and spare and fast, but so much unconvincing effort gees into the realisation of Drake's character and his menage that the adventure sometimes gets lost, That is one of the great difficulties about creating heroes: the background and personality needed to make them flesh must contribute to the atmosphere of the story at least — as it does with other American writers like Chandler and Ross MacDonald: it must not distract us too much, One of the most successful of modern British creations is, of course, William Haggard's Colonel Charles Russell the (now retired) head of the Security Executive. In The Old Masters (Cassell E2,10) Russell goes to the aid of an old friend, now dictator of an independent minded EIalkan Communist country. The friend, Milo, has dicovered valuable mineral deposits in his country, and wants the West to exploit them; he is threatened both by Russia and by an enemy in his own country. Intrigue abounds, and there is more action in which the ageing Russell himself participates than usual, culminating in a ferocious knife fight. I always find Haggard's stilted, snobbish, stoical writing rather compulsive, and there is no doubt of his success in creating a totally convincing mandarin world of stylised adventure. I thought The Old Masters disappointing, however, partly because much of it dragged, and partly because Haggard's last book The Protectors (Cassell £1.80), in which Russell scarcely appeared, seemed to me to be so good and so gripping.

However, on the principle that distinctive heroes are always to be welcomed, it is good to see Russell still in action. His world is, of course, highly artificial and, despite the detail of its realisation, highly unreal as well. It is also much more exciting than the world of the increasingly classless detective who dominates so much of our crime fiction. Patricia Moyes, in The Curious Affair of the Third Dog has Superintendent Tibbett, his wife and her sister and brother in law all involved in the mysterious disappearance of a useless greyhound, the murder of a gangster, several assaults and kidnappings and the discovery of a race track fraud of substantial proportions. Miss Moyes is a neat, economical and astute writer of detective fiction, but she relies a lot on the sheerly documentary presentation of the world of the greyhound track for her effect. It simply does not work for me because the presentation is not vivid enough, and because the family and neighbours is simply rather uninteresting. It is becoming increasingly difficult for the numerous writers of stories about ordinary professional coppers to present, not merely a good piece of detection, but a slab of convincingly realised life as Well, even though the latter contributes enormously to the reader's enjoyment. The truth may well be that the myth of crime fiction depends on extraordinary rather than ordinary heroes with wives and children and dogs and mortgages (unless, like John Wainwright or Reginald Hill, one builds one's mythic universe wholly within the police force itself) and that that myth contributes largely to the power of the form.

It is also possible, of course, to place one's characters in an historical or otherwise unfamiliar environment, right outside the common run of experience. Since the enormous success of the Hornblower novels of C. S. Forester, more than one writer has tried to create such an effect out of the world of the Napoleonic sea wars. C. Northcote Parkinson, admirer of Forester and biographer of Hornblower, has tried to do this with Devil to Pay (John Murray £1.80) in which he introduces Richard Delancey as a naval hero to rival Dudley Pope's Ramage, as inspired by Hornblower. Delancey has an unsuccessful mission to France, a

spell as a highly effective revenue man, and a long, elabo

rate and breathless adventure in Spain before he comes triumphantly through. The ac tion is good, the historical detail

impeccable, but the characterisation weak: I don't honestly

think that Hornblower can ever

be replaced, or even challenged. However, the search for new

heroes and new worlds will go on; however good the detection or the action, the character isation of the unusual.individual is a vital part of all adventure fiction.