SATIRE AND SUSPENSE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 820, 15 April 1955, Page 14

SATIRE AND SUSPENSE

| THE ECSTASY OF OWEN MUIR, by Ring : Lardner, Jnr.; Jonathan Cape, Enélish price ; 12/6. THE DESPERATE HOURS, by Joseph Hayes; André Deutsch, Bogiieh price 10/6. YOUNG American, Owen Muir, has a tremendous willingness to see the other fellow’s point of view. He argues

all the way against convictions that inevitably become his own. Born from a wealthy business family, behind the war effort for a dollar a year, he goes to a conscientious objectors’ camp, then to battle in Normandy, then to "novelty" business back home. So far so dulluntil it dawns on you that out of the populous emptiness of American fiction of this class emerges satire of skyscraper sharpness. Poor Owen rejects, accepts, then re-rejects his father. Here’s father’s advice: "You find a way to put opium in a bubble gum and make it legal, and Ill get you a billion dollars’ worth of finance." Naturally the novelty business succeeds. Naturally he marries the girl. Naturally sNe’s his secretary. Awkwardly, she’s a Roman Catholic. But the logic of things demands the diabolus ex machina, Monsignor Frasso. Subtle theological persuasion ranges on and on in a feast of casuistry, brilliantly done, with deft irony. But Owen's soul is at stake. In saving it he loses his wife. He begins to doubt everything but individual faith, and he defeats the world only by a monastic withdrawal from it. Owen Muir’s ecstasy is consummated in the last sentence of the page. Mr. Lardner merits many enemies. Well, now, an honest to goodness firstclass suspense thriller. To lump in a thriller with more "serious" work, and apologise for it, is to make a distinction no longer made by publishers or readers. But to find a normal family held to terror-pitch by three escaped criminals, and to look into the mincs and motives of both sides, is an experience no one has offered better than Mr. Hayes. The Desperate Hours is a distracting novel for those who can feed on distraction, and are not disturbed to the point of

destruction,

D.

G.