NEW THRILLERS
Clerk and dagger
PETER PARLEY
Only When 1 Larf Len Deighton (Sphere 5s) The Great Spy Race Adam Diment (Michael Joseph 25s) The Nearing Storm Desmond Donnelly (Hutch- inson 27s 6d) The Killing Season John Redgate (Cape 21s) The Treason Line Dominic Torr (Cape 21s) Night of the Hawk Richard Raine (Heine- mann 25s) The Deep Deep Freeze William Garner (Collins 21s) Mission in Black Gordon Cotler (Heinemann 25s) Len Deighton's latest extravaganza is coming shortly in hardback and already being made into a film. The back cover, photograph shows author and predictable cast of Attenborough and Hemmings larfing uproariously, anckcan you blame them? It promises to be a passably entertaining film but as a comic novel it has a long way to go. The scenario gives us three characters: Silas, a middle-aged pedant con- stantly harking back to scenes of dubious triumph in the Western desert; Bob, a sharp Cockney with suppressed leanings towards Egyptology; and Ez, a spry waif who acts as a catalyst for the trio. This wobbly team of con- fidence tricksters pulls off a perfect coup, and 'then comes sadly unstuck trying to sell dud guns to a new African nation and finally falls out over a complex banking fiddle in the Lebanon. When not on active service, the whole cast fall about their hotel room in a tedious slapstick routine, evidently intended for the camera.
Admittedly there are flashes of the old Deigh- ton style, and the research that has gone into the confidence set-up is as thorough as ever and makes tantalising reading. I found the idea of escorting the potential 'marks' (victims to you) to Salisbury Plain to watch the latest anti-tank manoeuvres, armed with a War Office press hand-out, a good pair of binoculars and an invoice book, particularly satisfying. Their operations permanently hover on the brink of failure as none of the trio can resist embellish- ing their watertight story with absurd flourishes. The pen that is proffered to sign the vital cheque was a gift from `Winnie' as a memento of the Atlantic Charter, and a .meeting in the foyer of New Zealand House is almost ruined by Bob's irresistible confession that he bought it last week. The pace of the book is fairly brisk and there are enough chuckles spread around the pages to spend five bob without feeling a total mark, but Deighton's device of allowing each character a chapter to himself makes for irritat- ing repetition, and the standard has fallen off considerably since The Iperess File.
Plunging deeper into the realm of puerilia, we have Adam 'Dolly Dolly Spy' Diment's The Great Spy Race. How his trendy, pot smoking hero ever got enmeshed in the secret service is beyond- me but, with an organisation called 6/NC/NAC sporting passwords such as 'Have you got any Papal Legate uniforms left, man?' anything is possible. The action, if you can sort it out from the cameo portraits of Carnaby Street and the Kings Road, concerns a faceless gnomic master spy long retired to a Caribbean island who is offering a substantial sum of money and an unspecified roll of microfilm to any spy who can last the course. Our hero is quickly dispatched by NickNack in the hope that he will be removed by the opposition or, failing that, bring home the goods. Unfortu- nately he wins through, and I can only express my sympathy with his employers. His appear- ance on celluloid is almost unavoidable.
Slightly more interesting is Desmond Don- nelly's political thriller, The Nearing Storm, if only for its author's recent altercations with the Labour party. The scene is England, presum- ably in the early 1970s, with a Labour govern- ment, weak Prime Minister and the familiar factors of mass unemployment, further devalua- tion and extreme political dissension. The plot concerns a highly implausible military coup under the cover of a ranting right-winger with advanced gaullist tendencies. Hero is an ineffec- tual Labour sip with a disgruntled constituency and a smart girl friend who drives him round in, of all horrors, a purple Aston Martin with red upholstery and whose godfather, providen- tially, is the former head of M16. When captured by the elite commando of Rhodesians who are to spearhead,the coup, the villain's aide tells the me 'You can join us if you like. You will have to give your word. . . . It is a risk for us but your record shows you are an honourable man.'
At this point I gave up, longing for the good old days when the sensibly tweed clad hero stood on the quarter deck of the destroyer bearing down on the anarchist in his tiny fishing smack. As a picture of the disintegration of society, The Nearing Storm runs a poor second to Constantine Fitzgibbon's When the Kissing had to Stop, but Mr Donnelly's handling of Political chicanery within the House is excel- lent and the book might have been quite impres- sive if he had restricted the action to the debat- ing floor.
Best of a feeble bunch are the two thrillers published by Cape. John Redgate's book is a simple tale of a CIA man who opts out in order to revenge himself on a wartime friend and fellow operator who has killed his family and best friend at the behest of the Russians. The CIA, need one add, are anxious to 'turn him round' and a predictable race ensues to prevent the hero's revenge. The action is fast and ranges from Berlin through America to the North of England. More complex is Dominic Torr's The Treason Line, with an unusual collaboration between a revered Chinese general and a senior American intelligence officer to obtain secret information on nuclear fail safe devices in a personal attempt to halt the arms race. Back- ground is Lake Geneva with a disarmament conference in progress and the spy rings of both sides unaware of the apparent treachery of their superiors. Dominic Torr, according to the blurb, is the pseudonym of an Allied diplo- mat and the book is well written and unusually convincing.
The third reasonably gripping thriller of the month is William Garner's The Deep, Deep Freeze. In the best Deighton tradition, surely rather hackneyed by now, the chapter headings are aphoristic little quotations from the Japan- ese game of Go. In some ways I preferred Adam Diment's concise quotations from contemporary culture which seem more explicit : 'Let's spend the night together,' a dictum from the Rolling Stones, left one in little doubt of the outcome of chapter 3. However, with a plot as intricate as Mr Garner's, Go is no doubt appropriate. A supposedly long eliminated Nazi with the mag- nificent name of Achim von Treysa reappears in search of revenge and a fortune in a Swiss bank. The man who betrayed him acts out an elaborate charade in a villa modelled on a Greek temple and the reluctant British agent, Jagger, is inveigled by his former boss to sort out the ensuing puzzle.
Finally, two real absurdities for the con- noisseur. Gordon Cotler's Mission in Black boasts a Pooterish clerk in the CIA who is sent on a useless mission to a Caribbean dictatorship to pick up a cylinder which had come off a satel- lite. The cylinder is merely a token to see which way the dictator will turn when he gets to hear of it. The only sympathetic character in the whole mish-mash is a roguish hotel proprietor who encourages his guests to throw lavish parties in his decayed swimming pool and then switches off the lights to save electricity. Night of the Hawk is a sub-Bond epic with a hero, nicely named David Martini, who suffers need- lessly involved attempts on his life before out- witting the sinister global machinations of the sabre-scarred, shaven-headed Muslim athlete, Dr Gert Hildebrand. Need I say more?
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