NEW FICTION

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29798, 14 April 1962, Page 3

NEW FICTION

A Case For Appeal. By Lesley Egan. Victor Gollancz. 307 pp.

Nell Varney, an attractive stranger with a big city air about her. is tried, convicted and sentenced to death for criminal abortion in the little Californian town of Contera where two unfortunate women have died. How can Nell possibly be innocent of such despicable crimes when no fewer' than seven witnesses ■in a close little community J have sworn on oath that she I was the woman who, on two ; separate occasions, left vicI tims to die? Yet with this [ black weight of evidence ’against Nell. Vic Varallo. ■ young police captain on the I force. is sure that she iis the victim of mis- ! taken identity, prejudice, lies. or a combination of all three, j Through bitter experience i Vic has learned only too well i the cruelty of a small town ■ where by “gentlemen’s agreeiment” Anglo-Saxon administration distrusts the Italian i “dago” element. But witi nesses from both sides of the | track are determined Nell I shall be the scapegoat, and I Vic, with the help of a clever I Jewish lawyer he calls in . from nearby Los Angeles, is , determined to find out why. Jesse Falkenstein, the young Jewish lawyer, unhampered by Vic’s smarting sense of inferiority, or more properly ’matured beyond it, brings a i fresh, open and flint-like ! mind to the case. Where | Vic gropes with instinctive ideas. Jesse proceeds coolly to uncover leaf by leaf a rotting mould of greed and fear at work. By the time Nell is vindicated the author has shaken out some of America’s complex race relation problems. She makes her point gently but with simple honesty, emphasising that patterns of prejudice can poison the judgment not only of its perpetrators, but of its victims as well.

Diary of a Simple Man. By Peter Cohen. Mac Gibbon and Kee. 191 pp.

A deceptive naivete, and the absence of chapters or a connected plot are all part of the technique employed in this clever first novel. Robert, the diarist, is almost wholly unlikeable —a beat of rather more prosperous origin than most of the tribe, a confirmed drunk, a liar and a lecher. He manages to get by without working, and feeds his boundless vanity by savouring his own witticisms. For a life of usefulness in any form he will always be a dead loss. When the book opens he is employing his talents discussing a girl friend, and thereafter in endeavouring to keep on affectionate terms with two new ones. This requires much ingenious organisation and involves him in commuting between Boston, where Julia has gone to live, and New York where Ann has her being and her bedroom. From these two young ladies, and from other, more temporary, girl friends he has only two modest requirements, one of which is that they must be enthusiastic and steady drinkers. Consequently their thought-processes are practically unknown to him until the sad day when both are to find him out. Robert is left with no satisfactory solution to his problem other than flight, and so makes his way first to London and then to Paris, where we leave him. The book is irresistably funny in its own odd fashion. Robert’s unhappy compulsion to say “I love you” every time he feels it is expected of him; his narcissism and his capacity for spur-of-the-moment inventions are all given without emphasis, and add up to a true self-portrait of a psychopath.

The Case of the Terrified Typist. By Erie Stanley Gardner. Heinemann. 340 pp.

This fast-moving thriller opens promisingly with a young woman suddenly appearing in Perry Mason’s office, hastily dashing off part of his business correspondence and disappearing as abruptly as she had come leaving some love-letters and two diamonds embedded in chewing gum as the only evidence of her existence. When Perry Mason is briefed to defend a man charged with the first-degree murder of a diamond smuggler he makes his own deductions about the connexion between the accused and the vanishing lady and acts upon them. His court duels with his old enemy the district attorney, and the complications of American legal proceedings give the author every opportunity to demonstrate his forensic skill, and the surprise ending, though a trifle bewildering, shows a dexterity of technique which distinguishes a master writer of crime fiction.

Taxi to Tobruk. By Rene Hazard. Collins. 159 pp.

This book describes a raid by a parly of Free French, attached to the Long Range Desert Group, on Rommel's oil-supplies just before the battle of El Alamein. During the initial dash across the desert flash-backs are given to explain why the Frenchmen are attached to the British forces, as well as thumbnail sketches of their characters. Only four emerge from the dangerous mission with their lives, and in their escape they lose their truck, but are enabled by a lucky chance to knock out the German crew of a half-track which has been sent to look for them, and to take possession of the enemy vehicle. One of its crew, a captain, is still alive, though wounded, and it is his relations with his captors, and the cameraderie which exists between fighting men engaged on a battle with the remorseless forces of nature which brings real drama to the situation. Without betraying his national loyalties the German guides the four Frenchmen through a perilous part of the desert until within sight of their own lines, and, on a generous impulse they afford him the chance to escape captivity. The ending is logically inevitable in the grim realism of war. The book has been translated from the French by W. P. Atkinson.

Voices in the Street. By Mike Simmonds. Fall Mall Press. 171 pp. As the title implies, “Voices in the Street” is a proletarian novel written with great j gusto by a genuine proletarian, a London cockney, whose writing exhibits many of the charactistics of this particular race of men. An indomitable cheerfulness marks Mr Simmonds’s style and the same spirit radiates from Harry and Pete and even from their Negro playmate Winkle. They survive the blitz together, endure the trials of schooldays and then life begins to draw them away from one another. Harry’s family leaves the Last End for a new housing area and the boy himself finds an unexpected career as a jazz pianist. Pete is not so lucky: he is attracted to the gangs and the teddy boys, with disastrous results; [ and Winkle is left more ori less where the reader found ■ him. There is not much fu-l ture for a coloured boy in i London. Although there is a sadness about the concluding pages of “Voices in the Street,” it is full of fresh, lively incidents and deserves to be widely read. It is Mr Simmonds’s first novel.