NEW THRILLERS
Art marts
PETER PARLEY
cuts with Pistol Gavin Lyall (Hodder d Stoughton 30s) he Changeling Niobid Mary D. Anderson Chatto and Windus 25s) nquiry Dick Francis (Michael Joseph 25s) he Gilt-Edged Cockpit Douglas Ruther- ord (Collins 21s) 'ege Edwin Corley (Michael Joseph 35s) Score of Arms Richard Meade (Peter vies 35s) he Sand Dollar George Sims (Gollancz 25s) illers with an art-historical bias are mething of a rarity and all praise, therefore, Gavin Lyall for his latest offering, Venus ith Pistol, in which antique gun dealer ilbert Kemp—pleasantly battered in the t West Coast private-eye tradition- omes embroiled for purely mercenary sons in the dubious activities of a South merican lady anxious to found an art allery for her native country in double quick e. After a lengthy trot round Europe with assistance of the splendidly unlikely arlos MacGregor Garcia, Kemp is con- nted with the real coup of the expedition, orgione's long-lost 'Venus with Pistol'. mething of an anachronism, I suspect, as tol(e)s to most people at the time meant rd cash rather than wheel-lock firearms, t I digress. Mr Kemp points the unerring ger of dealer's expertise at the firearm in estion, and exposes something more than st another fraud. Recommended reading r those with a thirst for the find in the is and a bottle of scotch in the third wer down.
Another art-historical episode, rather more nteel but still discerning on a parochial lit, is Mary Anderson's The Changeling (bid. Mrs Anderson, perhaps better known the wife of Sir Trenchard Cox of the and A, obviously has a professional grasp the museum world and her description of Hamerton Museum of Art, a north untry museum split by internal dissensions d seen through the eyes of an eager young Y assistant, is exceedingly acute. One those little old ladies who frequent eum lectures diffidently offers for Pection a bronze figure, which is instantly ognised as a major Renaissance work. al politics intrude and one of the keepers, xious to acquire the directorship, is forced spurn what is obviously an important uisition in order to ensure local support.
story line would hardly raise palpita-
among hardened thriller addicts but, as a closely observed picture of a provincial museum, it is unbeatable.
Racing, both horse and motor, is still a favourite category in the novel stakes for anyone with a genuine insight into the turf or track. Dick Francis is probably the best racing man's writer and his latest offering, Enquiry, is as good as anything he has written. Top jockey Kelly Hughes loses his licence—the ultimate shattering indignity for any racing man—in dubious circumstances, and finally reinstates himself by exposing some very irregular practices in the Jockey Club itself, most autocratic of all sporting organisations. Francis's scenes both on and off the turf are excellent, and his hero's pre- dicament is both sympathetic and thoroughly convincing. Douglas Rutherford's The Gilt Edged Cockpit is really a City finance story masquerading as a motor-racing adventure, and his hero, Patrick Crawford—an unsym- pathetic figure in many ways, in fact the original cad of the pit-stop—battles his way through the mesh of conflicting interests with a barely perceptible change of gear.
Best buy of the month is Edwin Corley's Siege, a positively alarmist but immaculately plotted tale of how Black Power forces seize Manhattan, to hold it as hostage for New Jersey which in turn is to become the founding negro state of Redemption. Fall guy is Major General Stanley Shawcross, negro hero of Vietnam, alienated by the brutal murder of his wife and children : a crime perpetrated ostensibly by a gang of Southern racists, but in fact by his colleague, tough polemicist, William Gray. The logistics of the coup d'etat are brilliantly worked out and, though Shawcross is something of an `Uncle Tom' figure, impervious to the cries of 'Blood' as a call to arms from the rioting negro insurgents, he rises splendidly to the
occasion. Anyone alarmed by the rising graph of violence in the us will find con- firmation of their worst fears in this novel, and also, hopefully, a certain elation in a climactic battle which is a kind of Little Big Horn of the twentieth century. White liberals and white negroes get a fair slating throughout, and one's sympathies are entirely with the defiant stand of the Redemption army, infiltrated into every public depart- ment in New York City and turning Man- hattan back into an island by blowing up all those splendid bridges.
A Score of Arms by Richard Meade has, to start with, a titillating cover of a very nubile lady clutching a toy tank to her ample bosom. The contents are by no means dis- appointing. An arms dealer, surely an un- likely hero, finds himself embarrassingly sandwiched between a necessary obligation to the us State Department and loyalty to an old army buddy, now better known as General Marc, crack guerrilla leader of a breakaway African state. The plot hinges around a hotly disputed group of old ex• Second World War tanks, and former tank men—or even those who never got beyond identifying the silhouette of a Sherman tank —will find this irresistible. Hero John Allison has a way with the ladies as well as with tanks.
Finally a brief word for George Sims's latest novel, The Sand Dollar, which has all the hall marks of continued success. Nicholas Howard, rare book dealer, delivers a scarce item of erotica to a dwarfish client in Carlton Gardens and becomes enmeshed in an involved and not unrewarding plot, which takes him as far as the Caribbean and back home to the seedier parts of London. Mr Sims has a definite flair for the unlikely, and keeps up a steady pace throughout.
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