NEW FICTION

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31659, 20 April 1968, Page 4

NEW FICTION

Three-toed Pussy. By W. J. Burley. Gollancz. 192 pp. In the Cornish village of Kergwyns a young woman named Pussy Welles was found murdered. Investigations soon revealed to Superintendent Wycliffe what all the village knew: that she was of easy—if indeed of any —virtue, and that her life was twisted like a convolvulus shoot round the lives of those about her. Many had cause enough to shoot her, and some hated her enough to expose with violence a congenital malformation of her foot, for thus was she found on her drawing-room floor, with her shoe and stocking tom from her leg. However, evidence clearly pointed to Dr Richard Barnes as her murderer and he was consequently arrested and charged. Superintendent Wycliffe, however, was not one to accept unreservedly any easy solution, and he continued his investigation, finding, as many a sleuth has before him, that all sorts of murk lay below the outwardly peaceful surface of village life. In fact, if detective novelists are right, the length and breadth of a fair land covers one vast sewage farm. A trail of former happenings, once thought to be the results of accidents, gradually suggests a series of murders, and further evidence clears Dr Barnes but leaves the rest of the field wide open to suspicion. Another murder opens new lines of investigation and a powerful and strange solution appears. Pussy Welles was one of those really evil souls who loved havoc for its own sake. How she wrought havoc on her fellow-villagers and upon herself is not a nice story, but it is one expertly told and compels interest. This is Mr Burley's second book; he is a writer to' be sought. The Games. A novel by Hugh Atkinson; research and background by Phillip Knightley. Cauell. 442 PPThe publishers call this book a work of “faction,” meaning fiction based on factual research. If it is the truth or near the truth, it is disillusioning, alarming. Before he gets to the highly dramatic, tragic ending the reader will inevitably have begun to wonder which is thinly disguised fact and which fiction. For the 1968 Olympics will have been held (not that far from Mexico) in fictional Santa Anna, a politically unstable republic southwards of the United States. There is an altitude problem. The names of real persons and places crop up during the story, and some of the fictional persons and places bear resemblances that tempt one to identify them with realities. The purpose of the novel is to expose the political and financial intrigues that could (or do?) sway the selection of the Olympics venue. The author has chosen the United States State Department and Central Intelligence Agency as his villains, but there are other villains, too, scheming to influence the International Olympic Committee controlled by a rich, elderly American fanatically dedicated to the preservation of the unpolitical, unideological purity of the Olympic tradition. Alas, unwittingly he plays into the hands of the intriguers. In the meantime, accompanied by sex, alcohol and high living, the intriguers pursue their aims in various parts of the world, and athletic candidates, warned of the devitalising altitude, are conditioned for the greatest test of all,

the marathon. Among them are the unsophisticated Australian aboriginal Pintubi, backed by gamblers; the Englishman Hayes, ruthlessly trained, hypnotically inspired, separated from his wife by a fanatic coach; the American Reynolds, sustained by his native ego. But none of them had reckoned on that explosive finale towards which they ran. The Malevolent Despot. By I. J. Collings. Gollancz. 240 pp. The despot of the title is 17-year-old Katherine Dowsett’s mother—a scrawny redheaded virago who is determined to master-mind her daughter's every move. She looks, we are told, like something, "suspended in formalin in some laboratory devoted to mutations.” The widowed Mrs Dowsett insists that Katherine share a bedroom with her, bring her a cup of morning tea made to careful specifications, wear only dresses that she has chosen for her, and become engaged to respectable, dull Jamie Taylor. At the story’s opening, it is Katherine’s first day at university. Although she finds it difficult to make friends or decisions, the liberating influence of university life helps her to shake off a little of her mother's unhealthy tyranny, and eventually become a new person with new friends. Nitch, a likeable, pimply youth from a college residential hall, is her first and firmest friend. Graduation and the prospect of a trip overseas—the story is set in Australia—set the seal on the emancipation of Katherine Dowsett. Although this first novel has lively incidents, much of it is stifled by pretentious prose. Would a gauche young undergraduate really think to herself: “My fellow students were beginning to abound by this time; some brushed past as I stood absorbed at the top of the incline. . . ?” It is hard to believe. Thursday’s Folly. By Judson Philips. Gollancz. 185 pp. Peter Styles, a journalist with a flair for detective work, having lost a foot in a motor accident caused by the irresponsible and violent behaviour of an unknown lout, had a horror of hoodlum conduct and an acute perception of impending danger arising from it. He met it all starkly in a large house, occupied by Thursday Rule, an eccentric old painter, and by Emily, his elderly de facto wife and model. They are fine people, caught by four vicious bandit youths escaping after massacring a whole family in another state, and using Thursday’s house on top of a mountain in Vermont as a hideout. One of them kidnaps a young girl, Linda Grant, from the village at the foot of the mountain; and Peter Styles, searching for her, is caught and held prisoner at Thursday’s house. The surrounding hillsides become filled with armed men searching for Linda and her kidnapper, but Emily would be shot if a posse were to call at Thursday's house. One hoodlum always had a gun pointed at her. By holding her to ransom in this way, the gangsters were able to force Thursday to do their shopping in the village, to gather news of the progress of the search for them, and to prevent anyone in the district from thinking that Linda or the bandits were at his house. Rescue from this tense and horrible predicament therefore depended on

the ingenuity and efforts of Peter Styles, who was handicapped by having his artificial foot destroyed in a fight with one member of the gang. The final fight is terrific and terrifying. The story is excellently told and bolds a reader in relentless gripThe Golden Oyster. By Donald Gordon. Hodder and Stoughton. 224 pp. The author claims that the “Rommel treasure” around which he has built the plot of this fast-moving story, did. in fact, exist, and that £6 million in gold, jewels, etc., went to the bottom of the sea in 1942 off the African coast. This is a fictional description of the location of the wreck containing the treasure made by two British ex-airmen who were shot down near it at the time, and who, after the war, with the help of an American millionaire, made a bold plan to recover it. Peter Grey, a solicitor, and his friend Ken Richards—the pilot and observer respectively of the shot-down aircraft—had rescued in their rubber dinghy a German officer from the wreck, and are scarcely surprised to find that their salvage plans are known to the latter and his friends (vaguely designated “the Mafia”) who are aiming to disrupt them. The story proceeds at a gallop, with Peter and Ken and the American, Gary Malloy (owner of a yacht with an expensive diving apparatus) locating and bringing up the treasure, hounded all the time by the German and his friends.- A mysterious Italian girl, with whom Peter falls in love is also brought into the picture, and after innumerable checks, and setbacks, bloody encounters with the enemy, misunderstandings and hairbreadth escapes from death, both romance and treasure hunting are duly rewarded with success. Mr Gordon is an expert at this kind of thing, and his technical knowledge of flying and underwater adventure combine to give his work some kind of credibility in a Bond type thriller. Murder By Court Martial. By Zoe Lambe. Whitcombe and Tomba. 191 pp. Zoe Lambe has told the story of the Maori chieftain, Luther te Wareatu, an educated man and a Christian convert, a friend of Bishop Selwyn and of Chief Justice William Martin. He was a cousin of Te Rangihaeata, who carried out raids in the Hutt Valley, and who was the friend and dupe of the notorious Te Rauparaha. Enraged at the British soldiers' kidnapping of Te Rauparaha at Governor Grey’s orders, Te Rangihaeata carried his rebellion into open warfare. Governor Grey, the brightness of whose image has been considerably dimmed by recent scholarship, is depicted here as an arrogant, despotic, and vindictive man, unwilling to heed advice from Settlers who knew the Maori people and their wrongs full well, and determined to push his land tenure schemes to the limit, come what may. Luther te Wareatu went to his cousin’s pa to advise moderation and avoidance of bloodshed. He took no part in raids nor in any act of rebellion. In fact neither Te Rangihaeata nor his tribesmen had been signatories to the Treaty of Waitangi, and could not technically be charged with rebellion against an authority they had never acknowledged. Luther was captured and Grey ordered him and his brother to be tried by court martial. This was irregular and illegal for the Riot Act had not been invoked. By Grey's orders he was found guilty and hanged. The fictional part of the story concerns Mike Lane, an English officer seconded to New Zealand from India. He was an arrogant young man on arrival, but came to be liked and respected by the settlers and made their problems and cause his own. Luther was twice able to save his life, although the two men had not met, and he fell in love with Luther’s sister-in-law, a young Maori princess. He is forced to be a member of the court martial. The story is extremely well told, has gripping atmosphere, and clear creation of the various characters. It moves forward with the inevitability of classical tragedy, and if we ever have a grand opera written round a New Zealand theme, here is the material for a wonderful libretto.