February crime
Patrick Cosgrave
I had begun to feel that those myriad tales of CIA-KGB rivalry, full of complicated entrapments, deceived innocents, and the inevitable sacrifice of the individual to the machine were becoming tedious — that, however ingenious the plotting, we had had just too much of the mixture — when, not without some reluctance, I sat down to read
Eric Clark's first novel, Black Gambit (Hodder, £3.95). And I can only say at the outset that it is one of those rare ones that has to be read at a sitting.
Mr Clark has told us that he conceived the idea for the book when listening to a radio report on the Panovs — the dancers at that time still confined inside Soviet Russia.
He began to wonder, he says, whether a trick could not be devised to smuggle them out, and he has now written up the story of semi-offical American attempts to rescue the geneticist, Zorin, from Russia, through a complicated scheme involving the replacement of Zorin by the murderer, Parker, released from gaol for the purpose. From beginning to end the plotting is cracking. As is not often the case with this kind of book, the characterisation is compelling — Zorin himself, his replacement, Cory, the . retired spy. All in all, Mr Clark is a discovery of the first order.
And there is another powerful debut to note. John Bruce is a British lawyer who emigrated to New Zealand and, once there, decided to abandon the law and try fiction. Air Scream (Collins, £4.95) is the result, the tale of a crash between a passenger jet and a small private plane in which — in spite of information we have already been given about tensions among the crew of the jet — all common sense and evidence suggest pilot error on the part of the veterinary surgeon piloting his own Cessna. But his widow refuses to accept this verdict, and thus throws into confusion not only the investigators and the insurance companies involved, but the government of New Zealand, which has pressing political reasons of its own for wanting the blame to be fixed on the vet. In every dimension Mr Bruce succeeds brilliantly.
The form of Air Scream is, thus, itself a fascinating study. In the world of more mundane crime I have noticed, over the last couple of years in particular, how inventive the ex-police constable John Wainwright (markedly prolific, with four books a year) has been in his experiments in that direction.. In The Day of the Peppercorn Kill (Macmillan, £3.75) he tells the story of a convicted rapist who, on his release from prison, starts a campaign of revenge, while, in The Jury People (Macmillan, £3.75) he returns to the old Raymond Postgate theme of putting the jury in a particular crime case under intense scrutiny during the course of the trial. For all that his style (like broken glass', Matthew Coady once commented) is difficult to get used to, Wainwright has brought some fresh insight into every one of the traditional types of detective story, and his background of scenes and characters from the world of what he always calls 'bobbying' — the tough, sometimes bent, invariably cynical and weary policemen — leaves every competitor, including the TV authors of romans ponders, standing. When one finally puts a Wainwright down it is not always easy to say just why it has left so powerful an impression; but the impression itself, like a great, dark cloud, always remains with me for a long time. And, for those who admire the cross-Channel creation of a similarly intense police world, Penguin have just brought out the thirteeneth Simenon omnibus, containing Maigret and the Man on the Boulevard, The Others, and Maigret and the Loner, at £1.25.
It has been very noticeable how, in the last couple of years, the Gollancz list, which one enjoyed such a high reputation in the world of crime fans, but which had seemed in the doldrums for a long time, has been strengthening. With the entry of new talents, and through the judicious purchase of a number of gifted American writers the company now bids fair to rise again to the heights it enjoyed under the great Victor Gollancz. Among their recent productions I favour particularly Kenneth O'Hara's The Ghost of Thomas Penry (Gollancz, £3.75).
A TV producer sets out to make a film about a dead student of spiritualism, who passed away shortly after his wife and baby were found dead in strange circumstances. The cast and production team — including the somewhat battered and depressed script writer who is the central character — all assemble at Penry's house, now the possession of a spinster female descendant. The scriptwriter is having strange dreams. The actor playing the lead begins to identify with Penry, and is escorted everywhere by an enigmatic occultist. The cast is rich and bizarre. Apparently supernatural influences manifest themselves, and murder is done. A first rate piece of work.
Likewise with Simon Brett's An Amateur Corpse (Gollancz, £3.95). Mr Brett has been going from strength to strength with his stories about the second-grade actor turned amateur detective, Charles Paris. This latest story is centred round the murder of a lovely actress playing in an amateur production of The Seagull. Mr Brett has not before attempted so thoroughly to enter into the classical detective story formula (this time everything turns on an ingenious double alibi) and he succeeds triumphantly, not only in his plotting, but in his depiction of character. It is, I find, uplifting, in a week of such excellent books, to be able to salute once again the continued virility of the pure detective story, so long after its golden age was supposed to have ended.
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