Cops and Under

WIWI. romance there is in the traditional cop! Solving problems by instinctive hunch, he spurns the ruthless calculation of a modern spy or the smooth Don Juan behaviour of a foreign agent. His efficiency is matched by a protective tender- ness for women and dumb animals. Despite heavy pipe-smoking he has a most discriminating Palate.

William Haggard's The. High Wire (Cassell, 16s.) belongs to this genre. A foreign ally wants a share of Britain's new scientific discovery. Our 1PP Men foil some irresponsible plots with Impeccable ease and the scene has to shift to Italy before anything can be allowed to go vvr°og. The heroine is seen very much from a masculine viewpoint. Beautiful and misunder- stood, forced to be tough by adverse circum- stances, she is just waiting for a real man to shoulder her responsibilities. Rex Hadley, whose life has been warped by marriage to a scrawny

and aggressive left-wing intellectual, eventually qualifies for the position. There is one big in- consistency in characterisation. Soliloquising on her escape from Hungary, the heroine describes ground riddled with bombs, ready to tear your crutch out. Though precious, I doubt if women consider this to be the most vital part of their anatomy.

Intuition also plays a large part in A Dead Ending, by Judson Philips (Gollancz, 15s.). A rather motiveless plot culminates in an intensely dramatic suicide attempt. Perched on a ledge, twelve storeys up, Dawn Terrill considers whether to jump to her death. She scorns the attempts to persuade her against suicide, yet continues to listen with pitiful eagerness. Ignorant of psychological theory, calm Captain Nichols copes by instinct, stage-managing the situation with the sure touch of innocence. As lie summons the various people who have had an influence on the girl's life, the jigsaw fits together with amazing precision. None the less some nagging ends remain untied.

Victor Canning's secret service men are much more vulnerable than the Bond variety. In fact,

in The Limbo Line (Heinemann, 18s.) Richard

Manson has quit the Service because he can't stand .the inhumanity of spying. But when he meets the Russian ballet-dancer, he accepts one more assignment, for her sake. A brave beauty, she is being smuggled back to Russia, uncon- scious in a box of ice. Neither side is much good at taking precautions and Manson is soon romantically sharing her captivity. Unfortunately you can't afford to skip the deadly games of golf.

Far away from the world of cops and robbers, The Collector, by John Fowles (Cape, 18s.), is

a grim and tragic story. It describes the obsessional love of a small-town clerk for an exuberant young art student. Virtually a sexual neuter, Clegg's one pleasure is collecting butter- flies. But Miranda dazzles him and when he wins a tremendous pools fortune, he sees an opportunity to possess her.

One night he catches her, with chloroform like a butterfly. But this specimen is too precious to kill. She is his living captive, a treasure locked up in the basement, whom he can gloat over in solitude, Though he recognises beauty in her, he cannot tolerate the thinking, acting reality. His thin-lipped prudery despises her natural vitality, perverting all normal impulses into dirty thought. Just as the vital essence of the butterfly is destroyed by the killing bottle, so, deprived of sunlight and intelligent human companionship, Miranda withers away. Slowly she is destroyed by the monotonous sterility of Clegg's narrow mind. The author of this remark- able and pathetic novel is an English don. In his prose he captures the flat limited vocabulary o a man without imagination and without hope, a man who exists but can never live.

Lionel White's Obsession (Boardman, 12s. 6d.) is a more normal affair and has a smashing nude

hidden on the jacket. An ageing man abandons respectability for a Lolita-type girl who loves peanut-butter sandwiches. Violence is never far from the surface.

The basic nightmare situation—to be accused of a crime you did not commit and be unable ti' prove your innocence—is the subject of

Patricia Highsmith's latest. The suspense is really laid on thick in The Cry of the Owl (Heinemann, 18s.). It's Kafka with a vengeance and Robert's knowing what they think he did does not make any difference to his help lessness, A victim of extreme depressions, he

likes to watch a happy girl as she potters about the house and cooks for her fiance. To Robert she seems the image of contentment. Their meet- ing quickly disillusions him. Without any en- couragement, she discards her fiancé in Robert's favour. The young man's resentment is viciously fanned by Robert's embittered ex-wife Nicky. In a stark and frightening story we watch the growth of public animosity towards an innocent person, a kind of wild-fire whispering campaign that is so compulsive that friends, and even lovers, find it impossible to disbelieve. I had nightmares over this one: it made me shout with frustration.

Alex Thorn's variation on the theme enter- tains but does not harrow. Facetious disc-jockey Fethowes is trapped by an efficient gambling organisation in Blackmail for Free (Boardman, 12s. 6d.). Attempts to clear himself from a murder charge only implicate him further.

Chandeliers and evening gowns are part of

the decor for Lucille Fletcher's . . and presumed dead (Eyre and Spottiswopde, 15s.). Cecilia Thorpe hated Julia for marrying her son Russ and thereby, she felt, stealing him from her. Russ was reported missing in the war but when Cecilia took a clandestine Swiss holi- day, Julia knew she must have news of him. Two suave young men and one flustered mother- in-law do their hardest to distract Julia from her search. Not knowing whom to trust, and desperate to find her husband, she stumbles upon some very curious activities, concealed by the hotel's glittering facade and its old-world violins. The author has a splendid light touch with character and a vein of wry humour. The hotel's collection of flashy old ladies is especially diverting.

ANTONIA SANDFORD