April Crime
Patrick Cosgrave
I have always, myself, held to that useful distinction between the thriller and the detective story which asserts that the resolution in the latter is achieved by thought, while in the former it is reached through action. This does not mean that the writing — or, indeed, the artistic achievement — in the thriller need be inferior; and Buchan's style, for example, is greatly superior to that of Conan Doyle. But the distinction may nonetheless blind us to the achievement of those adventure story writers who specialise in subtlety of characterisation and plotting; and their merits ought to be trumpeted from the rooftops.
Foremost among them is Anthony Price. To my disgrace, I had read only one of his eight books before The '44 vintage (Gollancz £4.50). I must, therefore, shortly hie myself off to Ramonda Jo Seeber's admirable Alamo bookshop in Shepherd's Market, where all thriller and detective fiction in print is readily available. His two heroes, Colonel Butler and Dr Audley (the one brave, the other brilliant) make up one of the very few wholly successful pairs in adventure fiction; and their merits are better balanced than those of Holmes and Watson. In the new book we are taken back in time to their first meeting, as junior participants in a strange adventure, led by the mad Major O'Connor, behind enemy lines in 1944.
While we are on style we should not, of course, forget that a certain delightful whimsicality of event and language, a certain comic improbability of character, is central to the achievement of the Golden Age detective writers. The most beguiling new talent in this field — as I have said before and, I trust, will be able to say again — is David Williams. His third Mark Treasure story, Treasure Up In Smoke (Collins £3.75) takes his banker detective — accompanied, this time, by his engaging actress wife, scatty and imperious by turns— to the West Indies, there to investigate the murder of a benevolent economic dictator, aided and hindered in turn by an ambitious politician, a profoundly stupid young banger, a colonial Governor obsessed by steam engines, a congeries of criminal nuns, and other eccentrics too many to list. I find it astonishing and moving that Mr Williams, com ing to fiction in middle life; has been able so effortlessly to sustain a classically high level of achievement.
Williams confesses to having learned a lot from the brilliant American combination writing under the name Emma Lathen — John Putnam Thatcher, their hero, is, like Mark Treasure, a banker. As the Penguin crime list goes from strength to strength it is
worth mentioning two Lathens, each from Penguin at 65p. They are By Hook or By Crook (murder and a disputed inheritance in the rare rugs business) and Sweet and Low (skullduggery in the chocolate trade). Nor have Penguin, since I was just mentioning humour, neglected the older masters, and you can get G. K. Chesterton's The Scandal of Father Brown from them at 75p. Even more fascinating in the paperback field is an utterly gripping detective mystery (now almost forgotten, but praised in these columns when it first appeared in 1888), The Passenger from Scotland Yard, by H. F. Wood. It is the tale (largely) of a journey from London to Paris by five men, one a detective, one a murderer, and one a corpse, and it is a great rarity, falling between the best of Collins and the best — in novels — of Doyle. It appears in what looks like a fascinating series from Dover of New York, and is distributed in Britain by Constable at £2.50 (good value, since it is a handsome and durable volume). This is perhaps a good moment to compliment Constable on their recent work in the crime
field: they have discovered Frank Parrish and June Thomson.
If humour is often at home in the detective story it is much less so in the thriller. The difficulties of combining fun and high adventure is to be seen in Tony Kenrick's Two Lucky People (Michael Joseph £4.50). It is a story of two young folk, Grace and Harry, suffering from the same fatal disease, who decide to spend their last weeks on earth frustrating the designs of a sinister gangster who — among other things — has dragooned the best butler, chef, secretary etc, in New York to work for him. In The Seven Day Soldiers Kenrick, who is one of the best straight adventure story writers now at work, did successfully combine excitement and jokes, but here there is too much (about the illnesses) that is tasteless and too much (about the plot) that is ludicr ous. Kenrick writes so brilliantly, and with such marvellous pace, that it is a pity to have to record a failure. Brian Priestley, on the other hand, in his second novel The Island Emperor (Macmillan £3.50)— mad scientist on South Sea island training a new school of assassins, and unmasked by Colonel Willy Rand, working in cahoots with the Chinese (Red) secret service — shows the enduring qualities of the wry and tough hero. Rand is a splendid, and rather unusual, addition to the galere of tough, professional heroes, having gained his spurs in Vietnam and Cambodia. Given that his (and Priestley's) base is New Zealand it is encouraging to note how much good work is coming from that country these days.
One way, of course, of recreating classical formulae is to set your story in one of the traditional periods; and the reign of Victoria is a current favourite. Nobody has mastered it —its plots and feel and smell and method of living — better than Petei Lovesey, creator of Sergeant Cribb. I Waxwork (Macmillan £3.50) Cribb tackler; the strange case of a woman sentenced to
death after confessing to a murder that, it seems, she could not have committed; nor can she be shielding anybody. Mystery, authentic background, first class detective plotting they are all there, and the portrait of the woman is memorable. Finally, one should mention Stanely Ellin who, like Lovesey, always produces something fresh and unusual in the way of plots. The Luxembourg Run (Cape £3.95) is a revenge thriller: the genre has been immensely popular since The Count of Monte Cristo, but has rarely been done as well as in this tense story of a young American who drifts into crime, is betrayed, and sets out to avenge himself with the aid of an unexpected inheritance. It is bitter, fast-moving, and topped off with a splendid and unexpected denouement.
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