Thrillers
Harriet Waugh
The Watcher Charles Maclean (Allen Lane £7.95) Little Brother John McNeil (Century £7.95) Woman in Red Paula Gosling (Macmillan £6.50) Puppet for a Corpse Dorothy Simpson (Michael Joseph £7.95) Wicked Designs Lillian O'Donnell (Robert Hale £6.75)
Charles Maclean the author of The Wolf Children (which gave a gripping ac- count of two small girls found among the cubs of a she wolf in India in the 1920s) has now turned his undoubted talent for story telling to fictional use in a powerful psychological thriller called The Watcher. Set in America, the plot is concerned with the sanity of its hero, Martin Gregory, who one fine day, for no apparent reason, cuts the throats of his beloved retrievers and, after assaulting their corpses with a knife, lays them in a large box and offers them as a birthday present to his loving wife, Anna. With the present is a twee birthday card of doggy doggerel which begins:
I love my dogs, oh, how dearly, Words but faintly can express, This fond heart beats too sincerely, E'er that I should love them less!
Martin, realising that his behaviour is inex- cusable, takes himself off to Dr Somerville, a psychiatrist, in the hope that his aberra- tion can be explained. He is, to put it mild- ly, feeling rather frightful. Even before he sees Dr Somerville he is attacked in his hotel room by a ghastly apparition. He knows that the attack must come from his mind, but the bruising on his stomach is all too real. Uneasy and ashamed, he does not tell Dr Somerville of his hotel encounter, and so the unshared secrets of patient and doctor accumulate to culminate in a sadistically bloody end. Under hypnosis, a number of previous reincarnations are divulged and the quest for Martin's sanity becomes an exciting adventure story as one follows these previous lives in what emerges to be the same search — a search that Martin now considers he must shoulder before tranquillity can return to him.
But is Martin mad? Did he really live those lives? Are Dr Somerville and his beautiful female assistant themselves re- incarnations from this past, out to thwart Martin's chance of redemption? Or is Mar- tin dangerously schizoid, as Dr Somerville claims, and looking for forgiveness for a childhood crime he cannot acknowledge? The reader's credulity swings between them like a pendulum. Throughout, there is a brooding expectation of violence. With the exception of the ending, which appears to be somewhat arbitrary, this is one of the most satisfying and exciting thrillers I have read for ages. Charles Maclean moves into the field at the top of the league.
Another thriller with some unexpected twists is John MacNeil's Little Brother. Toby Sovenson, a divorced, melancholic security chief at a U.S. computer company is rung up by his ex-wife because she is alarmed by the personality change that has taken place in their ten-year-old son, Jay. To begin with, Toby sees nothing wrong with Jay's absorption with his child's com- puter and puts his wife's suspicions down to maternal jealously; but when Jay attacks him with murderous intent after he is caught attempting to 'play' with the machine he changes his mind and starts in- vestigating the company that produces the computer. Some odd factors emerge. The manufacturers have no background and have a strange dislike of warmth. There is a possibility of a Russian connection and the FBI, who initially showed considerable in- terest in the findings, suddenly fight shy. Worst of all, there is shown to have been an epidemic of child suicide in connection with the computer. The novel deliberately leaves some aspects of the story unclear but the end is pleasingly disconcerting.
Paula Gosling is one of the most en- joyable adventure crime writers around at the moment. Her usual method is to create a situation involving her hero and heroine taking on both the police and the villains before they can safely extradite themselves into matrimony. The Woman in Red is no exception. The hero, Charles Llewellyn, a member of the British Consulate in Spain, is called out in the middle of the night when a British resident is arrested for murder. The case turns out to be a humdinger.
Reginald Partridge, who has retired with his wife to certain sunshine and sea air in Spain, is accused of having stabbed and pushed a crooked art-dealer off the balcony of his apartment. His deceased son, an artist, had supposedly forged Goyas for the dealer, and the police believe that Mr Part- ridge, convinced of his son's innocence, has murdered the dealer in revenge. Although Charles is sure of the father's innocence, it is his exhaustingly active, red-headed daughter-in-law who forces him to pursue the matter beyond the bounds of Foreign Office interest. Soon Charles is chasing forged Goyas as assassins chase him. There is a great deal of action and many twists before the surprise solution is sprung and Charles wins his impossible bride.
Puppet for a Corpse by Dorothy Simp- son has a straightforward plot, but it is un- folded with plenty of amusing interaction between the characters. Although it is fairly easy to guess the vital clue to the crime, the reader's enjoyment is not seriously marred
by this fact. The story is concerned with a happily married doctor who apparently takes an overdose at a moment when his life looks unusually rosy, as he joyfully expects his first child by his actress wife. When he is found dead, his adopted son (by a former marriage), his wife and colleagues all shout foul play. Inspector Thanet finally puzzles it out, but not before some unexpected things have dropped out of a few closets.
Wicked Designs by Lillian O'Donnell has a likeable female amateur sleuth as heroine. This is a refreshing change as, curiously, contemporary detective fiction has become increasingly a male preserve. When female operators take to the field, they are inclined to have a comical, sexy butchness that im- pairs their reality. Mici Anhelt avoids this pitfall, although she suffers mildly from being a 'concerned' human being. Sht works for a do-gooding organisation, ant obviously some of her cases arise out of /10 job. However, in this one, a young 0181 who has heard that she is good at getting lc the bottom of things approaches her abo° his missing aunt. When this highly respe° table lady turns up in the morgue after shf is found dead in the gutter with a sYrin0 beside her, nephew and Mici see red. Sine( the police are suspiciously reluctant to WI" beyond the skimpy outward appearances of the crime, Mid starts to investigate. 111 strands lead from the underworld to tO state politicians. Unfortunately, Lill!° O'Donnell, unable to leave a good puddlni alone, adds a final twist that slightly 101: balances the story. Notwithstanding 015, Wicked Designs is a very well-plotted novel.
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