FLOWERS, GUNS, AND GHOSTS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 28, Issue 724, 29 May 1953, Page 13

FLOWERS, GUNS, AND GHOSTS

A BLAZE OF-ROSES, by Elleston Trevor; William Heinemann. English price, 12/6. THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN FLIES, by Victor Canning; Hodder and Stoughton. En§lish price, 10/6. THE FAST BUCK, by James Hadléy Chase; Robert Hale. English price, 10/6. GHOSTLY TALES TO BE TOLD, edited by Basil Davenport; Faber and Faber, English price, 15/-. GIVE Elleston Trevor’s book first place because it is a thriller in which no one is killed or even assaulted, and it is written with distinction. The principal character in A Blaze of Roses, a subdued bachelor of 50, deliberately sets fire to the artificial flower factory in| London where he works and tries to escape from the country. All the reader has to go upon is that he is in love with his ex-typist and tired of his job. Confessing to his crime and yet eluding the police, he experiences a series of minor but exciting adventures, during which he is helped by two women. The real truth of what led up to his extraordinary action is kept to the end and comes as a complete surprise to the reader. , I would not say The House of the Seven Flies was as good as Panthers’ Moon, the only other book by Victor Canning I have read, but it is well above the average of this class. Germans seize Dutch treasure, the resistance movement shoots them up, ‘and after the war an attempt by an Englishman in a motoryacht to find the Idot lands him in perilous adventuse and in love. The yachting element will appeal forcefully to some readers, and the Dutch local colour and characterisation are good, Someone, quoted on the dust jacket of James Hadley Chase’s The Fast Buck. says he is "far and away the best writer of thrillers'in the English language." If this is a fair ‘sample of Chase (and I can’t remember. reading another), I couldn’t be much furcher from"agreeing. There is swift action, but I found the plot absurd, and the repeated killing by the "killer," plus other nasty things, sickening. The special interest in Ghostly Tales to be Told is in the fact that these stories taken from "the great masters" have been "arranged for reading arid telling aloud," and that the editor, Basil Davenport, not only writes an introduction on the art of such fireside telling, but says something about each item. The choice passes from Dickens, via Alger‘non Blackwood, Arthur Machen, Marion Crawford and W. W. Jacobs, to Alexander Woollcott. Admirers of W. W. Jacobs will mot be surprised by the opinion of another editor in this field, that "The Monkey’s Paw" is the best thing of its kind ever done. On this, the present editor comments that this kind of story belongs to all ages and countries. The range of the selection is indicated by a comparison with "The .Yellow Wall-paper," written by Charlotte Gilman many years ago as a protest against the "rest cure" for nervous breakdown. This story, which the editor considers the most terrifying ever written, had an effect on mental hospital practice

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