Custard comes to Deadwood

Press, 2 December 1978, Page 15

Custard comes to Deadwood

The Custard Kid. By Terry Deary. Adam and Charles Black. 54 pp. $4.60.

The Custard Kid and Calamity Kate have identical travelling-bags with identical initials on them. When these bags get confused in the waiting-room for the Hollywood stage-coach there ensues an improbable train of events which provides the “first piece of excitement the town (Deadwood) had known since the saloon dog had. fought Barnaby’s cat — and lost.”

As this parallel suggests, the excitement is not really all that intense. For example, the Custard Kid ends up in court only because he is too

much of a gentleman to tell the truth when the truth will hurt a lady. And he gets a 30-year sentence commuted to two years’ probation not by any ingenious device, but by melting his judge’s heart with the sad story of his childhood. In short, the book works by irony rather- than by sheer excitement. In this respect (and in others — e.g. the conversion of the “quick-draw contest” into a good old-fashioned duel) it betrays its author’s Englishness. So if you have a child anywhere between about eight and 12 who prefers English irony to American action this book just may be for him or her — PENNY CORBALLIS.