Blancmange and snails

Press, 2 June 1984, Page 20

Blancmange and snails

Death in Kenya. By M. M. Kaye. Allen Lane, 1983. 205 pp. $18.95. A Cold Mind. By D. L. Lindsay. Arlington Books, 1984. 311 pp. $27.95.

(Reviewed by

Ken Strongman)

Other than those who make a study of crime fiction, it is difficult to imagine the person to whom both of these novels would appeal. They demonstrate what a very broad category this is. One of them is like eating a worn-out blancmange, and the other has the sort of crunchy charm that might be experienced by biting into a snail.

“Death in Kenya” first enveloped an unsuspecting public in 1958, and is one of a series of “Deaths” in various place in which the smooth feathers of true romance are ruffled by murder. If Ms Kaye has the perseverence, she has an almost infinite series of titles to choose from. The heroine is Victoria Caryll, who returns to Kenya at the request of her landed aunt. Her heart is set aflutter by her former fiance Eden Deßrett (this name has Ms Kaye laying it on with a trowel), and by upright, colonial Drew Stratton (this name sounds like a Suffolk village). Meanwhile, there is an occasional, slightly bizarre murder, which may have been committed by the Mau Mau, by an outsider, or, heaven forbid, by one of the gin-and-tonic brigade. I can say no more, the blancmange is choking me. “A Cold Mind” trundles its readers off in a wheelbarrow and dumps them into the mud and slime of Houston’s underworld in Texas. Stuart Haydon, Jaguar-driving policeman, investigates a series of deaths of prostitutes. As he K’ es deeper, so the circumstances me increasingly horrifying. “Horrifying” is not quite the right

word, since it perhaps tickles the interest a little. “Grotesquely vicious” might be a better description and puts this book squarely within one movement in recent American crime fiction. Anyway, Haydon eventually tracks down the virus which is being used to kill the ladies of the night, and narrows down its source to the rich Brazilian communtiy in Houston. Cleverly, then, in one Hispanic (or at least Portuguesic) move, the author makes all the kinkiness explicable — they weren’t Americans. These two books have all the usual ingredients of crime fiction, namely, money, sex and violence. But their authors mix them in very different ways in a quite different settings. Of the two, I would throw away “A Cold Mind” after “Death in Kenya.” It is at least well written and has some guts to it, even if now and then they tend to spill out on to the page.