THE QUICK AND THE DEAD

New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 769, 15 April 1954, Page 13

THE QUICK AND THE DEAD

WHICH DOCTOR, by Edward Candy; Victor Gollancz, English price 10/6. MURDER MOST FAMILIAR, by Marjorie Bremner; Hodder and Stoughton, English price 10/6. SILENCE AFTER DINNER, by Clifford Witting; Hodder and Stoughton, English price 10/6. SO YOUNG TO DIE, by Gregory Tree; Victor Gollancz, English price 10/6. THE PASSIONATE VICTIMS, by Lange Lewis; the Bodley Head, English price 9/6. T WO of these stories belong to a class of "detectives," apparently increasing, in which the identity and methods of the murderer matter much less than (continued on next page)

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(continued from previous page) the skill with which the community involved is depicted. I finished Which Doctor befogged by the hunting for the criminal, but grateful for the introduction to life in a hospital for children in the Midlands. Edward Candy, who I conclude is either a doctor or a research worker in that field, has exceptional insight and wit, and his gallery of doctors might well make a theme for a B.M.A. evening. A_ diversity of characters mingle and clash, and dangers threatening institutional medicine are alarmingly indicated. The masterpiece is the professor head of the establishment, an appallingly dry narrow type, in whom the natural process of desiccation has been hastened by specialisation. I did not particularly care who murdered the rather likeable English business tycoon in Marjorie Bremner’s Murder Most Familiar, but I did enjoy the delineation of the dominated family circle, with its variety of character and politics. That Marjorie Bremner is an American graduate who has studied and worked in London may account for the freshness of her approach to these family jars and the British political setup. She has a good eye for character and writes sensitively. Silence After Dinner strengthens my feeling that Clifford Witting is not fulfilling the promise of his first books. The basic idea, of an Englishman in present-day China obtaining freedom at the price of desertion of his friends and murder, is original, but the working out of the story in England is fantastic in action, out of tune in character-draw-ing, and uninterestingly conventional in style. The descent is steeper in one of the two American stories, So Young to Die, by Gregory Tree, who made a splash with The Case Against Myself and A Shroud for Grandmama. A _ schoolboy and a schoolgirl have an affair; there is argument about pregnancy; she tries to seduce a young doctor; and she is murdered. I doubt if I have ever read a duller tale of duller folk. The Passionate Victims, by Lange Lewis, a story of Los Angeles, in which another teenager is killed, is similarly uninviting. However, a woman detective gives a dash of colour to it, and a professor investigator who talks refreshingly and wittily about psychology, in which he has left the Freudian track, does most to pull the thing out of the doldrums.

A.

M.