PLEASURES OF THE IMPOSSIBLE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 815, 11 March 1955, Page 13

PLEASURES OF THE IMPOSSIBLE

THE GLASS VILLAGE, by Ellery Queen; Victor Gollancz, English price 10/6. THE HERO OF SAINT ROGER, by Jerrard Tickell; Hodder and Stoughton, English price 10/6. DEATH OUT OF DARKNESS, by Michael Halliday; Hodder and Stoughton, English price 10/6. LAST CLEAR CHANCE, by Burke Wilkinson; Hodder | and Stoughton, English price 10/6. A BEAUTY FOR INSPECTOR WEST, ~a John Creasey; Hodder and Stoughton, lish price 10/6. HAT I have criticised Ellery Queen of late makes it all the more pleasant . to commend his new book, The Glass Village. Of his full-length novels I have read, this story of a tiny stagnant New England rural community impresses me most, An agéd and famous woman artist, obviously modelled on a contemporary figure, is murdered, and the village, convinced of a _ stranger’s guilt, literally takes up arms to block the course of suspected justice. To avoid strife, a judge belonging to the place stages an (continued on next page)

BOOKS (continued from previous page)

irregular trial, at-which the truth is sensationally revealed. The trial is a sheer impossibility, but the drama is tense and the dénouement very ingeniously contrived. The book’s chief merit, however, lies in its picture of an ingrown society. In The Hero of Saint Roger, Jerrard Tickell, who wrote Odette and Appointment with Venus, gives us a tale at once mad and delightful. To recover their chief ‘asset, the tourist trade, the principals in a French Caribbean island decide to create a war hero, after the manner of the fraud in General John Regan, but it is a body that is to be brought in. not a statue. Reaction to the plot is terrific and diverting. Britain, America and Russia all claim the dead hero (who really is alive and of no account), with trumpetings in the ether and elsewhere. The whole idea is fantastic, and there are yawning gaps in the joinery, but I was carried along hap‘pily in a rare mixture of excitement, romance, humour, beauty and tenderness. Whether he is describing a scene at sea, or a taxi chase through/Paris; or interpreting the mind of the young Frenchwoman roped into the deception (one of the most attractive heroines I have met in a long while), or of the worldly but kindly prefect; or showing us the island priest wrestling with his duty-Jerrard Tickell writes uncommonly well. There are moments of enchantment. Why are several attempts made, in which a black man is involved, to kill a girl in England? Protecting her costs the hero a leg on the eve of the European games, where he is booked to run. Probing the mystery leads him to ritual murder in an African tribe. Death Out of Darkness is rather crude, but Michael Halliday’s reference to a terrible problem facing European rule in Africa gives the tale a topical interest. Jokes about the Pentagon, that vast defence centre in Washington, such as the boy messenger who entered the building and came out a colonel, have reached New Zealand, but Last Clear Chance introduces it to me as the-basis of a thriller. This is a fast moving story of treason and counter-measure in high quarters in the United States. with an English V.C. holder as one of the chief actors. Wealth and power, beautiful women, fast motor craft, kidnapping and slugging, intrigue on the knife-edge of danger-the tale has its impossibilities, but real life presents some resemblances, and Burke Wilkinson writes with verve and point. There are more quotable things here than in most thrillers. A Beauty for Inspector West is, I think, the first of this John Creasey series I have read. It is somewhat higher

; than the "lofts."

A.

M.