EXITS AND PURSUITS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 823, 6 May 1955, Page 13

EXITS AND PURSUITS

HE NEVER* CAME BACK, by Helen Mc- | Cloy; Victor Gollancz; English price 10/6. | BONES OF CONTENTION, by Edward | Candy; Victor Gollancz, English price 9/6. SAFER DEAD, by James Hadley Chase; | Robert Hale, English price 10/6. NEST- | EGG FOR THE BARON, by Anthony Mor- | yg Hodder and Stoughton, English price | / . : [ELEN McCLOY is so good at mee veying the tension of mystery that to say He Never Came Back is a little | lower than two of her earlier books does | not signify much. It may be that spring of the plot, theft of a sacred. jewel from India, and the guardians’ | pursuit, are too reminiscent of The. Moonstone, and no doubt other tales. However, her gift for establishing and | holding tension is here in force. Perfect of the kind is the opening, where the fugitive thief, presented with admirable mystery, in desperation drops the jewel among a trayful of cheap trinkets in an American department store. As Chesterton said in one of his short stories, the best place to hide a leaf is in a forest. But innocently shopping, the heroine buys the jewel, and another intricate hunt is gn. You will certainly want to be in at the kill. "When a doctor does go wrong," said Sherlock Holmes. "he is the first of criminals, He has nerve and he has knowledge." Edward Candy, who, I take it. is a doctor or something close to medicine, has followed that exception-_ ally good "first," Which Doctor, with (continued on next page)

BOOKS (continued from previous page) another story of crime in a medical setting. In Bones of Contention we again meet Professor Fabian Honeychurch, President of the Royal College of Pediatricians (child disease specialists), but this time the action centres in the college itself. Again I am less interested in the crime than in the excellent character drawing and writing. The variety «of personality and the strains among the staff of a research establishment, are well described. I would counsel the author to be a little more explicit on technical matters. At the end a nice young doctor, skilfully poisoned by the chief villain, lies in a hopeless condition. The Professor saves his life, but how, is beyond my understanding. Though I have counted half a dozen er more killings in James Hadley Chase’s Safer Dead. I find the book less repulsive than certain others. Perhaps in this investigation by a crime reporter when the police are baffled, justice and virtue are given a better run. The pace is certainly terrific; we almost com®é back the previous night. And_ the author’s skill in depicting the vulgar rich in their glossy pleasure domes, is remarkable. Of two diners who look like executives: "You could almost hear their ulcers creak.as they moved." According to the jacket of Nest-Egg for the Baron, Anthony Morton’s tally

of the exploits of John Mannering, Robin Hood-Raffles turned honest art dealer and auxiliary to the police, is in the thirties. A nest of fabulous jewels from the East, owned by a beautiful girl who has been struck dumb by an accident, is placed in the "Baron’s" care, with consequences according to the rules of

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