Fine police tradition

Press, 7 March 1987, Page 23

Fine police tradition

The Unhung Man. By Alan Hunter. Future, 1988. 173 pp, $9.99 (p srb&cit,) Chief Superintendent George Gently is as good an example of the proper traditional English fictional policeman as can be found these days, with the exception of P. D. James's Adam Dalgleish. He is at one with the countryside and knows the foibles of his fellow man, using the skills of a diviner of the human spirit. In spite of its less-than-fellcitous title, “The Unhung Man" is as precisely in the tradition of the British crime genre as Its hero, An old judge Is found shot in his summerhouse in Wiltshire. His wife is a thoroughly unpleasant, conceited, opinionated friend of the chief constable, She might have done the deed. So also might the love of her youth, recently returned from an unsuccessful life in Rhodesia, or as she said, “the blacks call it Zimbabwe.” But in the summerhouse is a single fingerprint from a man who was supposedly hanged 28 years previously, the result of the judge's deliberations. Naturally, these high level complexities put the local constabulary into a bit of a tlzzwozz. Gently, though, lives down to his name and sorts out the whole thing with that quiet aplomb which is only to be found within the covers of this type of book. It is lovely stuff. — Ken Strongman,