Police calorie count

Press, 1 February 1986, Page 20

Police calorie count

Jewelled Eye. By Douglas Clark. Gollancz, 1985. 185 pp. $28.95. "Jewelled Eye” is described as a police procedural. However, it contains very little procedure and a great deal of conversation between policemen. A microbiologist, Arthur Hopcraft, has probably discovered a cure for cancer which still needs two years of testing. The heinous Libyans are after it D.C.S. George Masters collects a crack team of four policemen/a forensic scientist and an ex-S.A.S. major to “Sort out this little lot” as they would have put it. They “proceed" by staying in a pub on the Somerset coast This happens to be where Arthur Hopcraft was abducted and, as chance would have it also where the ex-S.A.S. man lives.. Everything is so secret and has such world-shattering impact that ■ D.C.S. Masters places an embargo on open conversation. Almost the entire book is thus taken up with plodding

discussions, usually in windswept shelters by the sea, between the members of the team in various combinations. "Jewelled Eye” does permit one interesting conclusion to be drawn. If it is accurate, British policemen must be enormous. When not talking, they were eating and drinking prodigious amounts, putting away between 5000 and 10,000 calories per day. Apart from such unlikely consumption, the conversations were also improbably stilted. Do policemen really say “lest,” “envisaged,” “correct assumption” and “I shall be present” when talking to one another? Perhaps they do, or perhaps that much food brings about an unusual style of speech. Oddly though, there is something about “Jewelled Eye" that keeps one reading. It could be to do with puzzling over what the title has in common with the plot. — Ken Strongman.