Laughs amid the thrills

Press, 29 March 1980, Page 17

Laughs amid the thrills

That Old Gang of Mine. By Leslie Thomas. Eyre Methuen, 1979. 200 pp. 516.25. Champagne Blues. By Nan and Ivan Lyons. Cape, 1979. 304 pp. $13.95.

Rainbow. By William Harding. Michael Joseph, 1979. 375 pp. $19.55. Successful comic thrillers have the charm Of being a relatively rare breed.. These three recent offerings all manage to combine comic invention with exciting plots, and all show restraint in keeping violence to a minimum. Leslie Thomas’s old gang of Florida geriatrics, bent on the pursuit of excitement through crime, specifically exclude violence from their programme. They have guns, but only one live bullet between them. In their first “job” they stick up a bus in the Everglades, to the delight of their (tourist victims. The takings are small, but the whole operation runs smoothly, quite a feat for a gang of five whose combined ages add up to 320 years. But success goes to their told grey heads, and the career of the ODDS (Ocean Drive Delinquent Society) runs riot “Champagne Blues,” set in the world of luxury Paris hotels, is a send-up of ell the gourmets’ guides to Europe, and of all the Europe-on-a-dollar-a-day books at the same. time. France .is determined to defend itself against tourists, especially against tour guides Who want to tell the world “where the

blue bloods of happiness are hanging out,” and also against those authors at the other extreme who beat down the price charged for “rooms without coathooks” in an, impoverished convent. The guides are kidnapped in a manner recalling Resistance exploits — to be held in a champagne cellar, of course, for “a day -without champagne is like Notre Dame without a hunchback. - ’ To ransome the guides, all tourists must leave Paris. The city s inhabitants turn out to cheer as the French Army hunts tourists through the House of Saint Laurent, through Helena Rubenstein’s, Givenchy’s 1 , and Maxim’s. A delighted French Government auctions off jumbo jet loads of tourists to less fortunate Common Market destinations. The plot, trying hard <o parallel events from the occupation and liberation of France in World War 11, almost complicates itself beyond comprehension. It hardly matters in this world of Attila the Nun and secret 1 agents who are permitted one last eclaire. ... “Rainbow” is a rather more ambitious first novel set in Prohibition America. It gallops through confidence tricks on golf courses and race tracks at a pace which would leave “The Sting” far in the rear. William Harding has produced likeable, credible rogues — men and women — who have hearts of gold, but who seldom let these interfere with their pursuit of easy money.