From new and recent fiction

Press, 16 June 1979, Page 17

From new and recent fiction

Cain's Daughters. By Doris Shannon. Collins. 440 pp. $13.95. Set during the American Civil War, this story revolves round Jemma Ealing, the daughter of a wealthy Northern industrialist who disobeys her family to marry David Sevendor, a Southerner she hardly knows. The Sevendor family soon reveals its true colours, and Jemma finds herself at the mercy of a power-hungry mother-in-law, and a slave woman, both of whom will stop at nothing, including murder, to get what they want. This novel takes several chapters to warm up, but the result is worth waiting for. Doris Shannon, an American, has an easy writing style and she makes the best of the many adventures her characters become involved in. .History lovers will particularly enjoy this powerful account of a country torn by war, both on and off the battlefield. — Margaret Butler. Scruples. By Judith Krantz. Weidenfeld and Nicholson. 474 pp. $11.40. Readers now have a fairly wide selection of hard porn, only obtainable through the right contacts or overseas; soft porn, displayed at milk bars and stationers everywhere; and flyaway porn, particularly suitable for airport lounges. Flyaway porn has lurid, but straightforward covers of sexual enticement, a fast moving story that if you happen to turn three or four pages during some clear air turbulence makes no discernable jump in the situation, and careful explicit, clinical

detail of sexual foreplays or deviations which would be a credit to a sex teaching manual. “Scruples” falls within this category, although it would require a lengthy flight ar a number of short ones to read it all. Billy Ikehorn Orsini has become one of the world’s wealthiest women. She is about to marry a sexagenarian entrepreneur who is full of vigour far his 20-year-old bride until he has a series of strokes and eventually dies. This, of course, leaves her quickly seeking jet-set excitement in Beverley Hills where she opens a huge shop catering to the spoilt wealthy. Numerous affairs, couplings and relationships of herself and her confrers later, the tale moves to the fairy-tale ending where the right boy finds the right girl, or the right boy finds the right boy, or the right girl finds the right girl, and they live happily, successfuly and wealthily ever after. Two women are even fulfilled by babies in a quaint, old-fashioned way. Miss Krantz writes exuberantly, but one suspects tongue-in-cheek for her market which will slurp this production with gusto in its paperback edition. — RALF UNGER. Storm Island. By Ken Follett. Macdonald and Jane’s, 1979. 322 pp. $11.50. Die Nadel — the Needle — is Germany's best remaining agent in Britain, as the Normandy invasion draws close. Nicknamed for his deadly and frequent use of a stiletto, Die Nadel discovers a vital secret: that the huge army apparently being assembled in East Anglia is an elaborate fake. This means that the invasion will fall on Normandy, not Calais, as the fake army has successfully led the Germans to believe. So Nadel must get the news back to Germany — and an MIS team under Professor Godliman must stop him. Follett tells a gripping story, keeping the tension high all the way. His historical references are well researched, too. It is unfortunate that

sloppy editing has allowed the tale to be marred by such details as misplaced possessives, typographical errors, and such technical faults as a submerged U-boat running deep on diesels (it would use electric motors), and a car breaking down with “a hole in a big end.” — A. J. Petre. Second Generation. By Howard Fast. Hodder and Stoughton. 441 pp. $11.40. “Second Generation” continues the story begun by Howard Fast last year in “The Immigrants,” a story still to be concluded in a third book. “The Immigrants” described the success, failure, and final contentment of Daniel Lavette; for those who have already read the first novel, “Second Generation” will be a little tedious as the author refers back to, and describes in detail, previous happenings for the benefit of new readers. But those who enjoyed “The Immigrants” will also find this new narrative equally as good and will be waiting impatiently now for the conclusion. —SHIRLEY McEWAN. The White Queen. By Lesley J. Nickell. Bodley Head. 351 pp. $11.40. Lesley Nickell has set out, in this fascinating book, to reveal something of the character and thoughts of Anne Neville, daughter of the Earl of Warwick, as she overcame a difficult childhood, a disastrous first marriage, and an unhappy experience as a kitchen-maid, to marry her childhood friend, Richard Plantagenet, and subsequently become Queen of England. This rare insight into her life is superbly told. Instead of giving a series of historical facts and events, the author has developed the colourful characters of the period and woven Anne Neville’s story round them. “The White Queen” is Lesley Nickell’s first published book. She is working on a second, also historical. — MARGARET BUTLER.