Smuggling

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31440, 5 August 1967, Page 4

Smuggling

Best Smuggling Stories. Edited by John Welcome. Faber. 223 pp. and Acknowledgments.

The editor has done a notably good job in making this selection, which is a perfect example of a good bedside book. Of the 11 stories about smuggling (perhaps the only legal sin to which most of us turn an indulgent eye) such famous authors as Ernest Hemingway, Somerville and Ross, and Geoffrey Household make their contributions. With a galaxy of talent to draw on, the reviewer can only record personal taste. In the opinion of this one pride of place must be given to "Smith versus Uchtensteiger” by Weston Martyr. It is a story of brains versus brawn, and virtue versus wickedness. Smith, a small, half-crippled bank-clerk, with a passion for sailing takes his little yacht to Ostend, only to find that he must face a heavy headwind on his way back to England. Consequently, he welcomes the proffered help of a'hulking stranger to give a hand with the yacht in return for a free passage to England. The stranger is an international crook who threatens Smith with death after they have left Ostend if he will not promise to put him ashore after dark on a lonely spot on the English coast. Fortunately the thug knows nothing of yachts or maps, and Smith is able to revenge mayhem and insults in a novel manner. “Tip on a Dead Jockey” by Irwin Shaw is a highly original example of smuggling in a big way. In “How Berry Ran Contraband Goods”, Dornford Yates is in his happiest vein, while Michael Gilbert contributes a chilling little study of a detective whose resourcefulness saves him from an unpleasant death. Victor Canning, Peter Cheyney, Cutliffe Hyne and: J. Meade Falkner also provide some good reading in an eminently readable book.