Christmas Crime
Patrick Cosg rave
There are fewer more interesting and Perhaps instructive contrasts than that between the American tradition of the toti8h, professional private eye, and the British of the amateur detective (though a number even of our professional fictional Policemen are gentlemen). We have spawned very little in the way of successful Private eyes Frank Marker on television and the admirable Cockney hero of the P.B. Vtnil novels -soon to reach the small screen are among the rare exceptions. Our amateur detectives, figuring usually in stories in the classical detective rather than the rough and tumble thriller mould, are on the other hand legion. And, though critics (1, t. the form, like Julian Symons, have been inclined in recent years to mutter over its ueltitse, that English tradition shows a good deal of capacity for renewal. For example, Michael Innes (whose greatest creation is, of course, the scholarly professional cop, ;Appleby) has shown welcome return to Lorin in recent years and has now started a series featuring the painter Charles Honeybath middle-aged, sensitive, humorous, slightly crotchety, like many of the best Innes characters. The second adventure is Honeybath's Haven (Gollancz £3.95) in which Charles investigates the madness and then death of an old friend a painter of genius -in the bizarrely delightful setting of a home for the rich and eccentric old-excellent detection, vintage Innes humour, and a satisfyingly original art fraud plot. Then, too, there is the remarkable David Williams and his hero the banker, Mark Treasure. A businessman of accomplishment now approaching middle age who has been carrying around the first sentence of a novel in his head for years, Williams is my new white hope of the detective story and his first, Unholy Writ, about skulduggery in an historic stately home, a semi-Fascist political moveinent and a mysterious letter is now available in paperback from New English Library at 70p.
But the private eye tradition is showing no sign of inanition either. Gollancz advertise their author Hyde Harris hero Kyd, the tough West Coast eye, Chandleresque setting, characters, moralising and romantic Writing as being deliberately imitative of Chandler and Hammett in Kyd for Hire (£4.25), the story of a hunt for a missing daughter. Deutsch have introduced an East Coast (Cape Cod) version in Spenser, the hero of Promised Land (3.50), with a missing wife this time, a troubled businessman husband, a nasty sang, a negro enforcer, and the traditional bunch of hard cops. As is suitable to the tradition, both Parker and Harris over-write somewhat, Parker in particular (and, as a don himself, he does it somewhat self-consciously), but they are also both vastly entertaining and suitably quirkish. Well worth a try at any rate and if you want to sample Spenser cheaply, earlier adventures (The Godwulf Manuscript, God Save the Child, and Mortal Stakes) are available from Penguin at 70p each. If, like myself, you are a devotee of the master, Chandler, himself then his Notebooks and a hitherto unknown (and cloyingly romantic) short story have been brought out (edited by Frank McShane, his biographer, Weidenfeld £4.50) and the same firm have published, in their new and fascinating series, The World of Raymond Chandler, edited by Miriam Gross (£5.95). Essays by various hands here, all good, and the most notable by Patricia Highsmith, Philip French, Clive James and inevitable and especially good Julian Symons.
Professional policement are likewise in first-class form for Christmas. One of the most striking and inventive of new authors in this field and getting away somewhat, I am very glad to say, from the tough trad ition pioneered by Z-Cars is Douglas Clark. His The Gimmel Flask (Gollancz £3.75) involves a complicated poisoning (of an unpleasant auctioneer) in a small English town, a most intricate investigation, much entertaining information both about antiques and auctioneering, and a first-class surprise conclusion, including the arrest of a villain whom the policeman has never met. There is also shout it from the rooftops a new P.D. James. The poet-detective, Commander Adam Dalgleish, in Death of an Expert Witness (Faber £3.95) has the usual insights into medical and pathological procedure, when one of the pathologists investigating a brutal and apparently casual murder is himself knocked off. Mrs James has everything urbane writing, necessary professional knowledge effortlessly assimilated, beautiful characters (including a miraculously good little girl), arid a ceaselessly probing but sympathetic mind. She is', as Symons has said, bang in the centre ofthe classical detective tradition, but without the humorous snobbery, the outlandish settings and the slightly fantastic plots which, to some tastes, mar the tradition. Her earlier A Mind to Murder (death in a private psychiatric clinic) is out in Penguin at 55p.
Finally, the modern novel of high adventure is also triumphantly alive and kicking fdr Christmas. It seems, too, that we shall shortly have to have a separate column for reviewing novels by employees of ITN. After Honeycombe and Seymour, Sandy Gall has now tried his hand in Gold Scoop (Collins £3.95) an African coup, sympathetic mercenaries (Forsyth is responsible for this new tradition), a hunt for gold, staggering descriptions of Africa (to which 'continent this book is dedicated), much fast action, and entertaining tales of the press at work. On the heels of this excellent debut comes Gerald Seymour himself, with Kingfisher (Collins, E4.50) his third novel, and well up in quality to the others. Here dissident Jews hijack a Soviet plane and land it in England. Moral dilemmas abound: our security seriices, the Russians, and the Israelis who send an expert over to London are all brilliantly done, and the inevitable tragedy left me in tears. Oliver Jacks a marvellous writer, too often unnoticed or underrated has, in Autumn Heroes (Hodder £4.25), a bunch of ageing second world war veterans on an impossible mission in a remote part of Africa attempting to rescue Princess Anne from mad guerrillas. This is a truly magnificent thriller, with stoic heroes seeking both renewal and fulfilment, exceptionally intelligent plotting and counterplotting, and blazing action. Dick Francis, too, in Risk (Michael Joseph 13.95), has yet again brilliantly rung the changes on a racing theme. The hero this time is an accountant and amateur steeplechaser who keeps being kidnapped for no apparent reason. A brilliant fraud is in fact being worked, but Francis's particular scores are, as usual, the racing, the maltreatment of the hero, the pace, and the extraordinary, almost tactile, writing about suffering. Three earlier Francis novels, with the nicely original collective title Three Winners (and they are all that), can be got from the same publisher for the knockdown price of £495.
Previous page
