August Crime
Patrick Cosgrave
The appearance of any novel by Ruth Rendell is a cause for celebration. But I am particularly pleased by A Sleeping Life (Hutchinson £4.25) because it sees the return of Chief Inspector Wexford, investigating, this time, the unfathomable death of an apparently respectable, well-heeled, middle-aged woman who appears, once the investigation has begun, to have had no past and, indeed, no existence. The resolution is a little disappointing and rather obvious (the same trick was used years ago by Josephine Tey in To Love And Be Wise, Penguin 80p) but that, to me, is little when weighed against the greater humour and humanity that Wexford produces in his creator: I can do with a rest from Mrs Rendell's grimmer (though brilliant) recent forays into criminal psychopathology.
But if it is the really grim face of crime you want then the choice must be Reginald H ill's A Pinch of Snuff (Collins £3.75). This must be a derivative week, for Hill's title was used some time ago by Michael Underwood. Snuff, 1 should explain, is the slang term for pornographic films in which a girl is killed for kicks, the killing being real and not faked. Here the rather subdued and downtrodden Inspector Pascoe stubbornly and half against the wishes of the delightfully revolting Dalziel (one of the best policemen in modern crime fiction) investigates an apparent incidence of snuffing and is led into the most sordid of complications. This is, I think, Hill's best book to date, but it is strictly for strong stomachs.
Another author who works in the modern tradition of tough bobbying is the head of the Devon and Cornwall Police Information Service, Roger Busby, whose seventh novel, Garvey's Code (Collins £3.75) is also easily his best. Here we meet Garvey, busted from his promotion prospects back to constable, violently hostile to modern police technology, dogged by his ex-wife, a man without hope, but with enormous dedication. Most of the story is seen through the eyes of Garvey's ambiti ous young sidekick, Cooper, who alter nately shares and then doubts Garvey's suspicions about the real killer of a Post; mistress found incinerated in her shop, an" about the intrigue rife in the higher reaches of their police force. Garvey is a splendid character, stubborn, fanatical, humorous, whose tortured dedication shines through" out a complex and bewitching tale. Mean, while, the grand master of the tough school of the roman policier, John Wainwright, has again broken new ground in Thief of rnse (Macmillan £3.75) which tells of what happens to a convicted murderer after he has served his sentence (he is not, by the we' claiming innocence). The form of the Man'isi journey enables Wainwright to traverse t the worlds that have again and again bee" sketched in his powerful novels, and esPeci cially the half world between real crinie the law. This is one of Wainwright's fines" All in all, though, the pattern of relentless gloom, hate and even insanity continues through all the best of the recent books' Mary Higgins Clark's A Stranger is Watching (Collins £4.50) is the best kidnapping I have read for years. It tells of a maniac, kidnapping a famous American journalist,s son and secretary and of his hiding their) Grand Central Station. The plot is enklrl.; plicated by the fact that the hero's wife %— recently been murdered and the man e„'?„,..". victed for her killing is awaiting death. PP' action, therefore, is played out against 2,11 intelligently wrought account of the Allierti: can argument about capital punishnle/i,e Also in splendid form is the delectabl Anna Clarke with One Of Us Must Pier (Collins £3.75). Here a doctor and he half-mad husband live in stretched unhalr piness, each repining over (or Pell exulting in) the apparently accidental deae. of their small daughter some years hef0r1. Enter a lover for the wife, and her radle. decrepit father, not to mention a psychiairla's patient of the wife who is the same a8e,o. the daughter would have been. The 1/;700 may seem too full of ingredients, but sp and delicate and disciplined is Miss Clart:ren writing that the fantasy grips and terrifies. This is a highly distinguished foe
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Still, with all that gloom and doo i5 madness and unrelieved evil around !tit, rather a relief to turn to such comParativ%)5 high spirited and light-hearted subieels..ts, 'plane hijacking and mysterious docunieuds The first is the subject of Robert Jansg/cei, News Caper (Macmillan 13.75), an °cod lent story which, interestingly, does not., to when the hijack is over but goes 'To examine the real reasons behind it and with a superb chase through the Solely Cowes week. The second is handle •
Michael Sinclair's delightful /Os The terplayers (Gollancz £3.95), ,w,fblicelluds young historian finds unexpecteo "in his and even more unexpected enelliter,s dish study of the life of a long dead governess in the Balkans in, aP" by 1877. Whimsical, scholarly and exela turns, this is a highly ingenious story'
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