NEW FICTION

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31119, 23 July 1966, Page 4

NEW FICTION

The Grease-paint Jungle. ByArnold Yarrow. Whiting and Wheaton. 224 pp. Behind this rather unoriginal title is a novel of rare 1 originality and ability. It is of course concerned with the theatre and those who work in it. Arnold Yarrow, we are told, has worked “as actor, director, stage-manager, and script-writer” but even without this information the ring of authenticity of the world he has created shows that here is an author entirely familiar with his material and firmly in control of it. The story is told by David Lisgard, an actor who has waited many years for the lucky break which will lift him from mediocrity to stardom. From the very first words of what is virtually a book-length monologue by David the reader’s attention is held. The form of this novel is magnificent for every character and every action is seen through David’s eyes and commented on in David's voice. Yet through this voice the author makes his own voice heard in implicit criticism of David’s character, his ambition and the means he uses to achieve his aim. It is brilliantly done for Mr Y’arrow never allows David to reveal himself too obviously yet the reader soon realises that David’s judgments of himself and others are suspect. The ironic detachment with which the author treats his narrative gives the book a distinctive and piquant flavour. The story itself is exciting, with interest sustained to the end. The theatrical background is fascinating and entirely credible, but best of all the characterisation is complex and moving. Jolly. By John Weston. Anthony Blond. 245 pp. There is a grass-roots realism in this story of adolescence in a small Arizona town. Artless, vunerable Jolly and his friend Luke Meaders are trying everything for kicks—sex. liquor and the macabre thrills of the preparation room at Mr Meaders senior’s funeral parlour. The boys’ friendship is a strong fuguelike theme running through the book: Jolly’s fussy, hot cakes-cooking mother, his nomadic, no-good brother Jamie, the girls he and Luke date so assiduously, these are all minor themes. But the undefended heart of Jolly Osment suffers many disillusionments. When older college friends take him on a night jaunt across the border, to the tatty brothels of Mexico, his girl is pregnant and offensively blase. Innocent Dogie, the newcomer to town, with the gold flecks in her eyes, betrays their ripening friendship, and at the book’s end, there is a death which shatters and strengthens him, starts him on the road to maturity. Although we are inevitably reminded of Salinger’s “The Catcher In the Ryle,” this is a slighter work —easy to read, but just as easy to forget The Hounds of Hell. By Jean Larteguy. Cassell 481 pp. Jean Larteguy tells here the story of three French mercenaries involved in the secession of Katanga from the Congo. The political background of actual events from the murder of Lumumba to the unexplained death of Dag Hammarskjold and the withdrawal of the mercenaries is fascinating. The atmosphere of confusion, of one crisis after another, of tribal warfare and of political expediency is brilliantely depicted. The author has produced a damning indictment of the mishandling of African affairs by both white and Negro. It is an uncomfortable novel; as the United Nations plans each

I move to resolve the situation jso the mercenaries counter--move to keep Katanga sepa- ! rate and the reader sees misJ takes, misunderstanding, deceit and brutality on both > sides. The storm of conflicting interests and of coldblooded manoeuvring gives this novel most of its interest. It is certain that the interest does not derive from the three characters who figure most prominently. La Ron- ; ciere, the pyschological war I expert, Fonts, the political' agitator, and Kreis, the i soldier, though clearly meant to contrast vividly with each other all seem to be more intent on satisfying their desire for a woman than doing the job they are paid for. None of the three comes properly alive and the same criticism can be applied to the confusing hosts of minor characters who appear spasmodically throughout the four hundred odd pages. Had Jean Larteguy spent more time on the purely political and military moves of the mercenaries and less on repetitous episodes of brutality and sex the novel would have been more unusual and more compelling. Salute From a Dead Man. By Donald McKenzie. Hodder and Stoughton. 189 PPRitchie Duncan, a released convict working as a barman, was given photographed copies of important but unspecified documents, stolen from an electronics research station by a young man with the unwitting assistance of his girl friend. Duncan did not know what he had been given, but Communist agents to whom the documents had been promised showed a conisiderable measure of chagrin when they were not delivered. These agents, with singular disregard for the rights of others to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, eventually kill the boy and have the girl committed to a psychiatric hospital whose medical director is the chief of their organisation in Britain. Poor security somewhere? Duncan, now aware of what was going on and aroused by attempts on his life and interference with his possessions, sought the help of two engaging friends, Chalice and Crying Eddie. These two, armed only with pick-axe handles and Innate forcefulness of character, had made a rich living by busting into banks. A rescue from the hospital was no trouble to them, but to little avail in the final analysis, for the girl was recaptured and later found in a state of no mean dismemberment on a railway track. For this, and a few other things, retribution was demanded and brought about by Duncan and his friends with speed and ingenuity. The story carries little conviction, but Donald McKenzie draws his central characters with sympathy and a fine line. The French Doll. By Vincent McConnor. Gollancz. 250 pp. Kirk Fanning, about to arrive in Paris on a C.I.A. assignment, made the shattering reflection that “Paris as like Paris. No other place in all the world is like Paris.” Well, it is true enough that the city does differ in some respects from Kaiapoi for instance; but what Mr Fanning found in Paris, the people he met and the way they treated him, were also most unlike what most of us have found in that delightfully magnetic city. Fanning came there impersonating Jeff Crossman, an American airman, killed in the war, who had bombed and sunk a German submarine heavily laden with heroin —

the best heroin—intended for the enjoyment qf important members of the Nazi hierachy. Crossman, contrary to air force regulations, had kept for himself charts of his flight and had marked the position of the sunken submarine. Furthermore, he had sold these to certain people concerned in illegal drug traffic. Preparations were being made to raise the submarine. However, Crossman, who was as crooked as an alpine highway, had put misleading positions on the maps he had sold, but had sent the correct one home, and it was now in Fanning’s possession. On arrival in Paris, Fanning, now known as Crossman, was immediately assailed by groups of uncongenial people: the dope chaps; a neo-Nazi gang of young delinquents, leather-jacketed and riding powerful motor-bikes; sinister hawkers of roasted chestnuts, übiquitous and quick-on-the-draw, all these, and others too, converged upon the pseudo-Crossman and all hell was a-poppin’—but with silencers on the barrels. The intelligence-systems of these groups were efficient in finding Mr Fanning, do what he would to avoid them. Thereafter, through culpable stupidity and not making careful enough enquiries, the gunmen shot several people by mistake. Included in the number was a pretty young divorcee who had followed Fanning from America. It was apparent that she had not visited France merely to pray at the tomb of St. Martin of Tours. And so the story went on, with chases and counter-measures, until Mr Fanning had eliminated his opponents, leaving to the last an ignominious character known to the others simply as “The Fish.”