Crime Compendium
It's not that I dislike women quite the contrary but, as I have had occasion to remark before in this column, their increasing dominance of the world of crime and thriller fiction is nothing short of astonishing. There has not been a great deal to crow about in the field recently, but two excellent new books by women have just
been published Margaret -Yorke's The Small Hours of the Morning (Bles £3.25) and Evelyn Anthony's The Persian Ransom (Hutchinson £3.25).
The Small Hours of the Morning is Margaret Yorke's seventeenth book. 1 have not read all of them: all but two (including the latest) of those I have feature as detective hero a pleasing and attractive young Oxford don named Patrick Grant, and he was clearly rather a pet of Mrs Yorke's. In her second last book, No Medals for the Major (which, I am happy to say, I raved about in this column) she abandoned him, and the detective format, and wrote a chiller about the effect of unjustified suspicion on a retired officer, a stranger to the small town in which he lives. The focus there was throughout on the Major: Mrs Yorke is far more ambitious in the latest book when she allows us to see the lives, stratagems and deceitsof a number of different people evolve, within the tightly knit small town of Felsbury. There is the over-conscientious librarian, Cecil Titmuss, whose sexy wife is having a passionate affair with a taxi driver. There is the introvert receptionist, Lorna Gibson, who loves him hopelessly and spies on them both, the old lady, the cunning young crook, and many others. Without save in the first few pages concealing anything from the reader Mrs Yorke lets us see the gradual intertwining of events which brings all of these people together in a tragedy that destroys nearly all of them because, when events impinge on their lives, their own selfishness and deceit makes them incapable of meeting them It is beautifully woven, utterly compulsive and delicately written, Mr Grant, I fear, must stay in Oxford.
Miss Anthony's book is in a different tradition, that of the rather lush romantic novel which is increasingly turning to the violence of modern high politics. The characters are invariably rich, ruthless, desperate, or all three, but to a heightened degree. The action is complicated but fast, and it is very violent with, as usual, a frightened and attractive woman at the centre of the web. Miss Anthony, in this tale • of a ruthless oilman seeking a vital concession in Persia, whose wife leaves him because he is having an affair with his super-competent secretary, whose assistant is in love with his wife, and whose plans are jeopardised by Arab terrorists and a devious Persian minister, only to be rescued by the super-cruel head of the Persian secret police, makes every character live. They are all somewhat highly coloured as in the equally compelling novels of Phyllis Whitnmey but they are credible because their minutely described context holds together so well. Colonel Ardalan, the secret police chief an improbable combination of kind father and torturer is a particularly
gripping character. P.C.
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