Crime corner

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33869, 14 June 1975, Page 10

Crime corner

The Kidnap Kid. By Tony Kendrick. Michael Joseph. 256 pp. N.Z. price $7.65. It seems at first that this book is going to be a comedy, and a racy one at that. Bunny Calder, the main character, is a pleasant young NewYorker, employed in a travel agency, who runs an impudent private racket on the side. One of his tricks goes riotously agley, and he finds himself in a complicated situation demanding courage and stamina, unselfishness to the point of placing himself in great danger, and in having to earn the affection and respect of others. The author shows the development of Bunny's character with unforced and deft exposition, and w-ithout losing the well-established humour of the first part of the book, increases the tensions and toughness of plot and action until he arrives at a whirling climax where there is rhe Devil to pay and no pitch hot. The book — which carries high recommendation — is unusual in its story and sustains an essentially lighthearted atmosphere through many changes of mood and violent action to a hell's-a-poppin' ending. Kill Cure. By Julian Rathbone. Michael Joseph. 192 pp. N.Z. price $6. It is the fashion now, and not one to be decried, to have a very exciting chase in crime films. This book has as its climax two — one by fast motorboats and one stretching human endurance to its limits up a steep hillside where a mistake would cost man> Ines in the teeming city of Istanbul Mr Rathbone opens his story quieth with Claire Mundham accepting a position, advertised in rhe "New Sta*e~ man." with a small expedition whose object is to take a supply of a drug panmvcin. to Bangladesh. The drug is a cure for cholera. What seems strange is that it should be sent overland bytruck — a long and time-consumin° journey — instead of by air in a matter of hours. Of course, it turns out that nothing is quite what it is meant to appear. Trouble with Turkish Customs officials, a murder, an apparent hijacking of cargo, and imprisonment in a Turkish gaol, followed bv kidnapping by a revolutionarv gang, ail upset the even course of the expedition. But Claire's father comes out from England and helps to find a solution to many problems.