NEW FICTION

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29856, 23 June 1962, Page 3

NEW FICTION

Swing High Sweet Murder. By S. H. Courtier. Hammond Hammond. 265 pp. This Australian thriller is set against the bizarre background of Mount Konak, a property in the Dandenongs owned by the Sweet brothers v nose joint interest lies in fostering and financially backing world-class lawn-tennis players. Adjacent to the house is an enormously high fire-tower which dominates the surrounding country, and in this Hugo Sweet (an unl.keable character) is found hanging on the morrow of a g.gantic row w’ith some Davis Cup aspirants during which he had categorically threatened to sack the lot. Inspector Haig, who is called in to investigate the case, has to write off the possibility of suicide because the dead man has a severe wound in his head, while his bedroom in the house bears unmistakeable signs of a bloody struggle. How, then, can his body have been transported to the tower by his murderer or murderers? Faced with a formidable array of suspects, whose common affection is about as warm as that of a family of snakes, the inspector has his work cut out to solve tHte mystery. His solution is only arrived at when at least three possible alternatives have been eliminated. Mr Courtier’s wit and gift for characterisation make this a more than usually entertaining thriller.

The Golden Rendezvous. By Alistair Mac Lean. Collins. 255 pp. When the Blue Mail luxury cargo-liner, Campari, calls a Caraccio, the chief port of a country recently seized by a revolutionary party, a number of puzzling factors become apparent Millionaires have always been the main human freight of the vessel for whose magnificent cuisine and spacious accommodation they are charged astronomical prices. Bookings are invariably heavy, and when two families have to cancel their passages at the last moment for private reasons their places are immediately filled by a Corsican tycoon. Senor Miguel Carreras, and his son, Tony. For some 60 pages the book follow’s smoothly and very entertainingly the usual fortunes of a sea-cruise as seen through the eyes of Johnny Carter, the First Officer; but he and his irascible captain, as well as other members of the crew, have an uneasy feeling that things are not exactly what they seem to be. They are not The wireless officer is murdered, so skilfully that his death seems to be from natural causes. Other murders follow and within two days the vessel has been taken over by the Carreras. The stake is bullion worth 150 million dollars, and to complicate matters a highly dangerous atomic contraption is known to be aboard. The intrepid Johnny, whose captors imagine him to be incapacitated by a leg-wound, is determined to spike the gains of the conspirators. Needless to say he is assisted in his dangerous enterprise by the lovely daughter of a millionaire passenger. The denouement is highly exciting and there will be some hard work done by casting authorities to fill the chief roles of this cinematic masterpiece.

The White Plume. By Samuel Edwards. Alvin Redman. 309 pp. This is the story of Rupert of the Rhine—Rupert the Devil—from his first cavalry charge and subsequent capture and imprisonment in Vienna. Throughout the book his personal development is traced through his actions. Rupert, the brash and confident prince, returns from captivity to boredom and poverty with his family in Amsterdam, and then come his great days as leader of cavalry in the Royalist army But Rupert suffers from the jealousy of the courtiers, the indecision of his vacillating uncle, King Charles I, and the dislike of Henrietta Maria the queen. Gradually adversity causes him to become disillusioned and defeated, though never disloyal During his years of exile he develops his gifts as chemist and artist, and later when restored to favour proves his ability as a sailor, strategist, and administrator as Lord High Admiral. As Rupert Grows older the austerity of his life is relieved by his love for Peg Hughes, an actress, and with her he eventually enjoys peace, prosperity and personal happiness. The author ha s obviously been more interested in his character than history and so it is unfortunate that this book, which is written in so straightforward a style • and with every detail authenticated. should somehow lack the sparkle, which Rupert himself possessed in such abundance.

The Mask of Comedy. By Henri-Francois Rey. Jonathan Cape. 222 pp. Frank Bernier, an alcoholic, has reached the stage where his withdrawal from the world is almost complete He lives within his own mind and is almost content to do so when, on one of his drinking bouts he sees Kim and experiences a strange reluctant wish to return to normality He deliberately denies himself the fulfilment of this wish and finds comfort in the company of Many—a coloured girl But at last his ill-treated body rebelled, and finding himself on the verge of Ipnacv he enters a clinic and undergoes disintoxication Or. his release, convinced of his complete cure, he and Kim become lovers and he is delighted with the sharpening of all the senses which apparently follows the cure. The pair journey into Spain, and it is only during the religious processions of Holy Week in Seville that Frank suddenly realises that his “cure” has in fact been useless; and the last thread of reason snaps. This is an interesting portrayal of a man on the borders of madness, conseouently is not light reading One feels that it might read better in French, the translation being, perhaps, a little mannered.

The Towers of Love. By Stephen Birmingham. Collins. 256 pp. This book presents a brilliant study of the type of matriarch whose manifestation of maternal love is to eat her young. Only one. of the family, the adolescent Billy, has escaped Alexandra Carey's fond clutches. An unlucky kick on the head at football had cut short his life, and his mother perpetuates his memory by keeping a movie projector and screen in her bedroom on which a pathetically short film of his youthful doings is recorded. Her constant resort to this melancholy entertainment is akin to a secret vice like the alcoholism which she had bravely conquered, but she cannot be cured of it in the same w r ay. "Sandy” Carey is nevertheless a woman of considerable charm a s well as being a fond if remorseless schemer, and this makes her doubly dangerous. Her husband has long since found femmine consolation, and when her son. Hugh, returns home briefly from New York where he and the write his mother has chosen for him are on the point of parting for ever, she does everything in her power to enslave him afresh —everything that is but encourage him to meet his youthful sweetheart who is also on a visit to her parents in the neighbourhood. Needless to say the two do contrive to meet and enjoy a brief love-affair, but fate has not finished with the Carey family. Pansy, the timid girl of 24. is to be married off to a thoroughly suitable husband, and it is her final evasion of this arrangement which breaks her mother’s power. The study of character throughout the book is unerring A brittle, barren society, and the specious vulgarity of its supposedly sophisticated tastes in the trappings of gracious living, is drawn with a quiet malice that stems from acute observation.

The Big Country. By E. V. Timms. Angus and Robertson. 230 pp. It will be a sorrow to his admirers to learn that this is the last instalment of the saga of Australia’s history and development to come from the pen of this well-known novelist. At the time of his death it was unfinished, but his widow has skilfully and and convincingly completed it. The book's theme is to claim for half-caste aborigines the humanity and justice their mixed blood demands. In the year 1844, a white man, George Crumby, deserted the aboriginal girl to whom he was married by the law of her tribe well knowing that she and her coming child would probably die. The girl is rescued by a kindly white couple, and some 30 years later her daughter sets out to find and kill the man who has betrayed her mother. Jenny Courage shows little or no trace of her aboriginal blood "and hejj,.-story begins witJr ~ her meeting three drovers, Ben. Larry and Joe. known as the “inseparables,” and an eccentric old couple, Mr and Mrs Gubby, when they all become lodgers at “Ma” Jenkins’s boardinghouse in Bourke. Mrs Gubby an octogenarian Londoner who has made a fortune as a hotel-keeper in Sydney, is consumed with the desire to own a little bit of Australia, and with the assistance of the three drovers finds the property she is looking for in a back-country station in New South Wales. Having taken a liking to Jenny she engages the girl as housekeeper, and in due course the station flourishes. Every type of contemporary adventurer drifts through Mr Timms’s colourful pages, and for poignancy there is the story of the betrayal of the aboriginal girl. Suzie, by the English remittance man, Charles Bowen, which has a tragic sequel. But for Jenney and the man she loves all ends well, and her erring father is brought to repent his past sins. A great deal of research has gone into this, as well as all the other books of the series, but Cockney readers might be moved to challenge the irrepressible Mrs Gubby’s accent.

The Lonely Girt By Edna O'Brien. Jonathan Cape. 254 pp. This is the story, circa 1960. of the betrayed village maiden —a subject dear to the hearts of Victorian novelists —without the improving moral atmosphere ' w;hich accompanied such escapades a century ago. Not only i s Caithleen a willing victim of her seducer, the film producer Eugene Gaillard, but she positively asks for a fate worse than death and having achieved it expects to be happily cossetted by her lover for the rest of her days, notwithstanding that his wife has only temporarily left him. Two young conventbred girls living in Dublin lodgings—Caithleen and her friend Baba—are naturally enough exposed to moral dangers, but when an anonymous letter appraises her dipsomaniac father in a far-off village of Caithleen’s association with Eugene he behaves like a mad bull, publishes her shame to all the neighbours and more or less forcibly carries her home to O-- i egenerated by the improving influence of himself and the village priest. Caithleen, whose unofficial nuptials are as yet unconsummated, makes an adroit escape, and flees te her lover, determined to be seduced with no more delay. Her enraged parent and some male cronies follow her, and inflamed by whiskey and righteous indignation proceed to lay about Eugene with a will until his housekeeper comes to the rescue with a shotgun, at which the moral purity compaign ends with their hasty and ignominious retreat. When Caithleen leaves Eugene in a temporary huff he gladly lets her go to her mortification and ; heartbreak. Touches of; facetious blasphemy and thel wholly physical appetites and I attitudes displayed in all the characters will no doubt entertain readers who like this type of novel, but though '.he author evidently intends them to feel compassion for her heroine, Caithleen remains at best an unsuccessful and rather wearisome little wanton.

A Little Treachery. By Phyllis Paul. Heinemann. 275 PP. When Clem and Catherine Hare, elderly spinster sisters, buy the cottage of their dreams, they hope to begin to enjoy life, even at an advanced age. They have previously watched the mental disintegration of their mother over a period of years and with her death feel themselves free and eager to have a little simple happiness in a new home of their own, with a lovely and well-tended garden. But the “little treachery” of their friends kills all hope of happiness. The cottage, inadequately surveyed by an expert who felt, them to be inferiors who couldn’t expecj much, proves a bitter disappointment with its "leprous walls” and "clammy plaster.” The longed-for garden is waterlogged and covered with a tangle of rank weeds, and the neighbours are coarse, insensitive and openly amused by the spinsters’ efforts. Gradually they withdraw from all outside contact and Catherine has the grief of watching Clem slowly go mad. Even here no sympathy comes her way. for the general idea is that Clem was supporting her misshapen sister who refused to meet people. In her anguish she seems to be about to follow her sister w’hen Emmy —the rough but kind vulgarian appears, to draw Catherine back into the world But again human greed attacks her and causes her death. This book is full of vivid imagery but the atmosphere is like the luxuriant, fetid growth in the garden described. No character here is completely normal and only the dark and bitter side of life is shown—even the child Simon being distorted. The author has great feeling for words and her manipulation of them is praiseworthy, but despite such skill, this is not a pleasant book.