To rescue a daughter

Press, 8 February 1986, Page 20

To rescue a daughter

Necessity. By Brian Garfield. Sphere/ Collins, 1985. 213 pp. $8.95 (paperback). Twenty years ago Peter O’Donnell showed how difficult it was to use a heroine as the principal character in a thriller. Modesty Blaise was just too tough to be true, so that her more soft and intimate moments seemed unreal, even impossible. Brian Garfield has solved the problem in an unassuming little story that was one of the best thrillers to appear in paperback last year. Madeleine La Casse is Everywoman, 1980 s style, driven to unexpected extremes by a bizarre situation. Her husband has gradually turned out to be something secretly dreadful; she has run; she has been forced to leave her daughter behind. Somehow she must build a new appearance, a new personality, a new life — and retrieve her daughter -Ellen from a gangster stronghold. How she does it makes a startling, plausible thriller, with just enough sex and violence to fit the formula, without excesses for the sake of purple prose. This is an unjust and fearful world, seen from a woman’s point of view. But a word of caution for the feminists — Madeleine sets out expecting every man she meets to be, potentially, a monster or a rapist. They are not. Generally, they are polite and helpful, and rather sad and resigned when she rebuffs them. That kind of realism, and a reluctance to preach, make “Necessity” a taut, satisfying story.— Literary Editor.