Crime compendium
There is often a great deal more similarity than appears on the surface between the private detective hero la Raymond Chandler, and' the secret agent or spy. Of course, many spy or intelligence Ineroei dre' super-figures, like James Bond; or look like scaled-down versions of him, being equipped with all manner of special expertise, and gifted with remarkable powers of leadership and endurance. But there has also been a growing tendency to endow the secret agent hero with the introverted conscience, the shabby life style, and the baroque prose, all of which once accompanied Philip Marlowe on his peregrinations through Bay City; and this tendency is especially marked in the rash of modern. thrillers which deal with the manipulations of very high politics.
And there is clearly life in the quintessesentia II y American private eye dog yet, as is shown by the fact that James Jones has adopted the form for his latest novel A Touch of Danger (Collins C2.50), the first of a series to feature the ageing, battered, disillusioned, but skilful Lobo Davies — this time on a Greek island infested with hippies, chasing down both drug smugglers and murderers, bedding a German countess, becoming involved in several fights, and struggling all the time through a miasma of corruption. Ross Macdonald, hasP to handle a not dissimilar theme in The Underground Man (Fontana 30p), though Lew Archer's hectic search for the young kidnappers of a small boy, for their motive, and for a double — or perhaps triple — murderer leads him, as always, into the murky pasts of a number of families, and compels him to explore that peculiarly modern generation gap which has a never ending fascination for private eyes and their creators. As is to be expected from the older hand Macdonald's book is much .faster moving and more tightly plotted than Jones's. •
Berkely Mather (one of Ian Fleming's favourite writers) sends his secret agent (freelance) hero Idwal Rees on the trail of a dope smuggling ring fronted by youthful hippies from Calcutta to Bombay to the Seychelles. in Snowling (Collins £2). This is a good, punchy thriller, but has little of the richness and very little of the attractive, tough guy moralising of Jones or Macdonald. It is interesting, by the way, that English authors (who tends, as Anth456, Shaffer was saying the other day) to concentrate on upper crust and amateur private detectives and on the gamesmanship of the thriller, rarely do produce an equivalent of the American model: perhaps the nearest thing to a British equivalent of Marlowe, Davies and Archer was Slim Callaghan, Peter Cheyney's popular creation of the 'thirties and 'forties.
"They're trying to take over too much of the world of C. P. Snow," grumbled a distinguished crime editor to me the other day, speaking of the writers of high political thrillers (usually, but not always American) who enmesh their heroes in the fate of nations or the complications of presidential and prime ministerial politics. Actually. the development is not all that new, Duckworth Drew, and other heroes of William le Queux, rarely set out on a mission without a chat with the Prime Minister or Foreign Secretary; John Buchan's heroes 'frequently had a similarly high purpose; and I have just been re-reading two splendid Kevin Fitzgerald thrillers (another minor classic who
appears to have stopped writitigl Throne of Bayonets (in which al., tempts are made to kill one of lit heroes as Ile leaves No 10) and It,' Different in July, first published 1955, and a superb, brillianti imaginative Women's Lib thriller involvittg the fate of the state. Th„e difference between the old maste,' and today's writers (Fleming e.'6 cepted) is that the oldies supporte the Establishment and revered preservation, while the modern, are severely critical, and frequent'.,) find their political bosses deviot9 and corrupt — hence the move wards the private eye morality. a Two brilliant such books are W".4 ham McGivern's Caprifoil £2.00) and Edward Stewarl'5 They've Shot the Presidenei Daughter (Doubleday. $6.95). „111, Caprifoil Arab terrorists abduct tr President of France and two sPlen,; didly 'characterised agents, Augu', Spencer and G. N. Wyndon
ley, go in search of their old league, codenamed Caprifoil,
is in the President's entourage.1), pace never slackens and the Mor."5 as well as the physically dangeroo. position of the two heroes contrl, butes a great deal to the thrilloelement. In Stewart's book the pre; sident's daughter is shot, apparel', ly by a would-be assassin aiming the President — or so it aPPen: until a document is discovered gesting that the best way of glry'; ing sympathy for the Presider' would be to shoot his daughre,r This is a dense, powerful boor:: operating on several different 0'; rative and moral levels, describinto the seaminess of high politics in. manner worthy of 'Kriebel and ey, andproducing contradictor) solution after contradictory sclin'
,
tion. and mystery after myster)before the staggering ending.
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