Murder most enjoyable
Harriet Waugh
It is particularly heartening to be able to welcome Simon Shaw's Bloody Instructions (Gollancz, £13.99). His first novel, Murder out of Tune, was a stunning black comedy starring a mordantly nasty actor called Philip Fletcher who developed a taste for murdering more successful rivals and unsympathetic theatrical agents. After this exhilarating start, his second novel, a con- trived black comedy about a suburban man who murders his wife and dresses up in her clothes, came as a considerable disappoint- ment. Now, though, with Bloody Instruc- tions, Simon Shaw returns to his theatrical roots. This time Philip Fletcher finds himself on the receiving end (one time literally) of someone else's murders and with a strong possibility of being arrested for them. How he circum- vents and unmasks the real culprit is at the heart of the plot, but there is a great deal of heartless fun on the way to the dénoue- ment.
I hope we see more of Philip Fletcher, and that Simon Shaw never softens towards him as Patricia Highsmith has to her psychopathic antihero, Tom Ripley. The first Ripley novel, The Talented Mr Ripley (published in 1956), was an outstanding thriller which has deservedly become a classic, while the others, although very good, have never quite come up to it. In her last one, however, a sneaking suspicion arose that Patricia Highsmith, like some fond grandmother of a delinquent youth, had come to view Ripley's doings with a softened and partial eye.
This is confirmed by Ripley Under Water (Bloomsbury, £13.99). In consequence, Ripley is a less interesting fellow, but this is
not to say that the book is to be despised. Here Ripley becomes uneasy when an American couple called Pritchard move into a house near his and his wife's home in France. They appear unduly interested in him and seem to know more about his past activities than they should. He soon realises that they are a bored and inadequate couple who get a bizarre kick out of marking a quarry and then pursuing it, if possible to its death. Since there are literal skeletons in Ripley's past, he feels he must act to protect himself.
The first half is really very enjoyable. There is a feeling that at any moment something is going to give and the conse- quences might be terrible, but when Tom takes himself off to London to consult old allies the novel loses its way. Nothing very much happens. When the climax does come, it is disappointing. Despite this, it is still a very readable thriller.
The yearly awaited pleasure of a new Emma Lathen is with us. East is East (Gollancz, £13.99) brings an American electronics company on a collision course with Japanese commercial restrictive practices and politics when it tries to break into the Japanese market. This takes Lathen's urbane elder statesman banker, John Putnam Thatcher, from America to Japan to London, as , death stalks the committee meetings, emotions get out of hand, and shares crash. Excellent fun, excellent plotting and an excellent dénoue- ment.
Dick Francis' Comeback (Michael Joseph, £14.99) is not quite as good as Longshot, his last one, as it has an unneces- sarily slow start. I have always suspected that Dick Francis' bad bits, which nearly always take place abroad, might have to do with a wish to get tax relief on airline tickets, restaurant meals and accommoda- tion. Once it gets under way, though, the novel is very enjoyable. A bachelor, Peter Darwin, on leave from the Foreign Office, becomes involved with the problems of a veterinary horse surgeon whose patients die on him for no explicable reason. During Darwin's subsequent investigation you learn a lot about horse disorders and what unscrupulous owners get up to in the way of insurance fraud. At the same time, there is a healthy body count. Skip the first 25 pages and you will find Comeback thoroughly engrossing, pact', tense and, until a scrambled solution, nicely plotted.
For the second time in his mediocre acting career Charles Paris, Simon Brett's alcoholic, middle-aged actor and amateur detective, is set to enter the lucrative world of corporate videos. In Corporate Bodies (Gollancz, £13.95) he is hired to play a fork-lift truck driver in a promotional video for a drinks company. No sooner is he fork- lifting away than he discovers the body of the office siren, Dayna Richman.. The company, Delmoleen, hastily declares it an industrial accident, but Charles thinks differently. In the process of tracking down the murderer he uncovers more than he bargains for, both at management level and in the warehouse. Intrepidly, he breaks into buildings, pokes his nose in where it has no business, and nearly gets mashed. He also gets things very wrong. Corporate Bodies Is as funny and enjoyable as all the other splendid Charles Paris novels, but as usual with Simon Brett's books, I had MY suspicions and they turned out right. Sue Grafton has now reached 'H' in the alphabet of her titles. I dread what might happen when she finally comes to 'Z' as I would hate to lose her tough and engaging female private eye, Kinsey Millhone. Kinsey, who is in her mid-twenties, lives In the Californian seaside town of Santa Teresa. She totes a gun and sometimes uses it. She also quite often gets shot. Her feminist credentials are good — she only has one dress, black, battered and old. At the start of H is for Homicide (Macmillan, £13.99) a colleague at the insurance company where she sometimes works is murdered. She takes over one of his minor cases of motor insurance fraud, only to have the case escalate when she goes undercover to befriend Bibianna, the pretty Spanish American girl who has put in the bogus claim. After a shoot-out involving an old buddie ex-policeman she Is first banged up in Santa Teresa's jail wit,h Bibianna, then kidnapped by Bibianna s furiously jealous, psychopathic jilted fiance who runs a team milking insurance comps" nies. H is for Homicide is less a detective story than a thriller, but it is well plotted and tense. Also, unlike many Macmillan crime books, the print is readable. Death of a Warrior Queen (Constable, £10.99) takes us away from the amateur detective back into police custody, where we join S.T. Haymon's good-looking Inspector Ben Jurnet who has to try and find out why the waitress-mother of a retarded youth is buried in a sand dune 01 picturesque bay. The suspects are plentifw-' ex-lovers, the lover she was supposed to have run away with, and her son. There are strong emotional complexities to the storY" involving previous deaths and a bizarre suicide. S.T. Haymon is a strong, heated writer who does not flinch from entering uneasy territory. Good.
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