0, let them not be mad!

Harriet Waugh

HOT MONEY by Dick Francis

Michael Joseph, £10.95

YOUR ROYAL HOSTAGE by Antonia Fraser

Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £9.95

CHILD'S PLAY by Reginald Hill

Collins, £8.95

WILD JUSTICE by Lesley Grant-Adamson

Faber & Faber, £9.95

DEATH OF A GOD by S. T. Haymon

Constable, £8.95

The autumn season opens with some enjoyable galloping detection from Dick Francis. Hot Money stars an amateur jockey called Ian Pembroke, one of the sons of the much married multi- millionaire, Malcolm Pembroke. Ian has been estranged from his father for three years after criticising his choice of fifth bride. Now the fifth wife has been found strangled in the potting compost and the police suspect Malcolm and do not believe him when he claims that someone is out to get him too. In his hour of need Malcolm turns to Ian. It does not take them long to realise that this is a family matter. One of Malcolm's disgruntled children cannot wait for father's millions. All of them are in desperate need of money and all of them, including Ian, are emotionally maimed by having a careless father and bitter mothers, but which of them is trying to murder Malcolm? Ian sets out to discover. Sadly, it turns out to be a question of boring old madness rather than detection, but there are plenty of fireworks along the way to keep the not too discerning detective read- er happy.

Antonia Fraser's Your Royal Hostage involves Jemima Shore in a colourful romp, as much satire as detection, when she covers a royal wedding as anchor- woman for an American television com- pany. Jemima's life is not looking too rosy when the novel opens. Her long-term lover has just married 'another woman' and she has been summarily dismissed by Megalith Television. The job of covering the royal wedding comes just in time to save her face. Soon she is involved in a full-blown drama. A crazy animal rights group intends to use the wedding to make a telling protest. A journalist interviewing the royal couple is murdered — knifed with a royal souvenir paper-knife. The womanising bridegroom is held at gun point while his exotic ex-mistress makes love to him, and the spoilt, doll-like, but not unintelligent bride is kidnapped while attending the opera. The bride, Princess Amy of Cumberland, is the most compelling of the characters, which is lucky because Jemima takes a back seat to events in this one. It is only at the end that Jemima pieces it all together but this is more from observation than logic. Despite the fact that, as in Dick Francis's novel, it all boils down to that convenient hold-all, madness, Your Royal Hostage is frothy, jokey, accomplished and action-packed.

A new Reginald Hill is always a plea- sure. He is one of the few police precepto- rial writers who genuinely involve the reader in the personalities and lives of the police team. Pascoe, Wield and Chief Constable Danziel make a robust and enjoyable threesome. In Child's Play the missing heir, assumed dead, of an un- pleasant old woman appears at her funeral only to turn up murdered shortly after. Was he the real heir or a phoney planted by interested members of the family? Skeletons almost literally rattle in the closet. Meanwhile, Sergeant Wield, craggy and ugly, and an unsuspected homosexual, is made vulnerable by the arrival in town of a criminally minded, unbalanced youth who has known carnally Wield's former lover. It does not help when the youth is also killed. Are the deaths connected? The answer lies to some extent in the past, and Pascoe, the ageing police whizz-kid with a feminist wife, only comes up with the answer after his insensitive and abrasive

boss, Danziel, has made him feel pretty foolish. Meanwhile, more important than murder in Danziel's mind, is to get elected to the county club and to frustrate the ambitions of his thief constable. How all these factors are woven into the conclusion makes a strong story. My only complaint is with an unnecessary last chapter that goes over the top.

Lesley Grant-Adamson sets her new novel, Wild Justice, in Fleet Street. The unpopular proprietor of the Daily Post is found stabbed. Nobody much laments his death except for his daughter — an office pest — who says it is political. Nobody believes that, as there are too many jour- nalists who hated his guts, including his editor whom he was trying to sack. Gossip- columnist, hackette, Rain Morgan finds herself increasingly involved and even threatened when she is sent a knife in the post. She hardly notices how many strands she holds to the killing as she is busily involved in trying unsuccessfully to throw her boyfriend out of her flat, re-awakening the interest of Detective Superintendent Paul Wickham who is in charge of the case, working through the chaos brought about by the presence in the office of the Patrio- tic Ten, a group of bovver-booted, grievance-ridden readers of the Daily Post, and keeping a high profile in the back- biting jostle of journalistic drinking holes. There are many red herrings and it is quite intricately plotted, although not quite intri- cately enough as I saw the villain coming from a long way off. However, Wild Justice is pleasantly written, lively and nicely satirical. Also it moves at a good pace and not all the characters come out of the stock-cupboard. Now that the newspapers have left Fleet Street this will be the last time that a contemporary detective novel can be set there. Sad.

As in many of the other novels reviewed here, psychology plays a large part in Death of a God by' S. T. Haymon. But, unlike the others, the characters are dis- turbed, possibly evil, but not raving, and these lesser states of mind are considerably more interesting than madness. The novel concerns the death of a pop idol who returns for a concert to his home town in Norfolk after some years' absence. The day after his concert he is found crucified in place of his effigy. Our hero, Detective Inspector Ben Jurnet, who is blessed with good looks but a difficult girlfriend, has to decide whether the crime lies in the pop- star's past — is the crime in fact local? or did he bring it with him in his entour- age? The author loses her touch when she introduces some unconvincing drug- running but the centre of the story, which lies in the mysterious personality of the dead singer, is excellent. The solution is quite unexpected, and emotionally and dramatically satisfying.

Harriet Waugh's last novel Kate's House is published in paperback (Coronet, £1.95.)