FROM THE CRIMINAL RECORD

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32394, 5 September 1970, Page 4

FROM THE CRIMINAL RECORD

The Hardliners. By William Haggard. Cassell. 186 pp. This is another story of Colonel Charles Russell, the retired head of Britain’s Security Service, who intervenes this time to prevent a great ifijury being done, through publication of an ex-ambassador’s memoirs, to an unnamed country. The country obviously is Czechoslovakia, and the background to the story is the Russian occupation. Publication of the book, backed up by the ambassador’s diaries which would add verisimilitude, would give the Russians justification not only for occupying Czechoslovakia but also for further and much harder repressive measures. The position, therefore, was that Russell, the British Government (who would be compromised in no small degree), and the Czechoslovakian Embassy all wanted to suppress the memoirs and to destroy the diaries, and the Russians wanted to have the book published and to possess the diaries and use them as a potent weapon of diplomacy. All of them are prepared to, and in fact do, use violent methods to get what they want; and coshings, kidnapping, shootings, rescues and betrayals follow one another in generous abundance. Through it all. Colonel Russell’s experienced judgment is never at fault, nor is his urbane manner seriously disturbed. The story is told with a sure feeling for design. The X.Y.Y. Man. By Kenneth Royce. Hodder and Stoughton. 191 pp. “Spider” Scott was an XYY man, which meant that he had an extra chromosome in his physical make-up, thus making him one who would have a strong and even irresistible bias towards crime. His nick-name meant that he was a cat burgler, and while it would be improper to call him a good burglar, there is no doubt that he was an efficient one. We meet him as he is released from prison. Apart from his tendency to steal everything which is not chained to the floor and surrounded by electronic alarms (although he can deal with such quite easily) Spider is a pleasant character, so created by the author that readers like him, feel that they know him, and wish him well when the book ends. There are no cardboard characters in this story, and it should make a good film. The Chief of. Secre* Intelligence felt that Spider would be trusted to burgle the Chinese Embassy in London and remove something which was detrimental to the British Government Spider was reluctant, but very strong pressure, amounting to blackmail, was put on him and overcame the difficulties involved and got what he wanted. In doing so he injured one of the Embassy people. Spider found that what he had recovered was a photograph showing the Foreign Secretary in such an unfavourable light that the Government might topple.

Naturally enough, the Chinese raised a loud howling and Spider found that the British police were chasing him, the C.I.A. became interested in what he had stolen and their agents violently assaulted him but he turned the tables on them. Then the Russians got him and treated him even worse. Chases through the London streets are most exciting and should make excellent film sequences. Eventually everything works out favourably for Spider and it is hoped they will stay that way. But he still has that extra Y chromosome. Remote Control. By Harry Carmichael. Collins Crime Club. 192 pp. Harry Carmichael produces alibis which would be a credit to Macavity himself, and in this book his ingenuity is well up to standard. Quinn, a spiritously-addicted reporter, on the “Morning Post" met a casual acquaintance, Hugh Melville, In a pub in Fleet Street and had a few drinks with him before Melville had to leave to collect his wife and drive her home. On the way home they had the misfortune to kill a man who tried to save his dog from being run down. A blood test showed that Melville had had much more to drink than the law would tolerate and he was sent to prison for a year. Mrs Melville was deeply shocked and, although she had never met Quinn, she telephoned him several times and spoke of her unhappy marriage and eventually asked him if her husband would be released from prison if she stated that she had been driving the car. Quinn told her that nobody would believe her after she had waited six months before she mentioned it That night she was found dead in a gasfilled room, and an autopsy showed that she was three months pregnant. The police found Quinn’s telephone number at her flat and he became a suspect. His old friend, Piper, an insurance investigator, came to his rescue and with skilful delving found out that many things were quite different from what they appeared to be. How he unravels a complicated plot is interesting, as are the creations of character of all the people involved. Undercover Man. By Hans Helmut Kirst. Collins. 252 pp. Although Gunner Asch does not appear in this book, nevertheless it has Kirst’s humour and sardonic sideglances. Karl Wander, journalist and ex-officer, found a girl lying outside his apartment in Bonn. She had been hurt, and Wander found out that her name was Eva Morgenrot. She was the daughter of an armament manufacturer and, through her he meets a former mistress, Sabine von WassermannWesten, who gets him involved with Konstantin Krug, a Secretary in the Bonn Government, and Feldmann, a Minister who wants to become the

Minister of Defence. Wander Is entrusted with the task of creating scandal by leaking details of bribery over army contracts and thus open the door for Feldmann to demand investigations in the state of the army. In a novel by Kirst, material for such'a situation soon abounds, and very humorous much of it appears to be. But all becomes complicated when Eva Morgenrot is found dead, presumably a suicide. There is some suspicion that she may have been murdered, and it is not long before Karl Wander is suspected. Investigations are headed by a Superintendent Kohl, a typical Kirst character, and it soon appears that Baroness von Wassermann-Westen would be highly unsuitable as a President' of the Y.W.C.A. As one complexity piles on another, poor Wander has to execute giddy gyrations to keep in circulation, for eventually everybody is after him; and how he fares must be left to the reader. Those who know Kirst’s books will enjoy this one.

Hit And Run, Run, Run. By Anders Bodalsen. Michael Joseph. 224 pp.

This book is a translation from the Danish language and has its setting in Copenhagen and environs. Henrik Mork was a high-ranking executive in a Danish motor firm, which had just completed an agreement with a German firm of car manufacturers to assemble the German cars in Denmark. The business conditions were advantageous, and Mork—after seeing the Germans off at the air port—allowed himself to become involved in a party with some students. Not liking the party much, and small blame to him for that, he borrowed a car to get himself to a railway station so that he could go home. It was a bad night, and the car’s brakes were defective; the result was that he hit an old man in the dark on a country road and killed him. He was unknown to the members of the party and managed to avoid implication in the accident for a long time. A few months later he had to make a television appearance in the course of business, and the student whose car he had borrowed, recognised him and blackmail began. It was not the usual type of blackmail. What the student, Hostrup by name, wanted was a public relations job with Mork’s firm. He created havoc in this position and got himself more and more involved with Mork and his family. Finally his blackmailing demands included a large sum of money and Mork was driven to dealing with him in a conclusive fashion. The author has created suspense and tensions convincingly in the early part of the book, and with accelerandi and increasing power on the drum rolls as the climax comes. The book is being filmed and should make a good one.