WRAITHS AND STRAYS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 895, 28 September 1956, Page 13

WRAITHS AND STRAYS

THE LONG BODY, by Helen McCloy; Victor Gollancz, English price 10/6. DEATH OF A STRAY CAT, by Jean Potts; Victor Gollancz, English price 10/6. THE LAST ENEMY, by Barton Roueche; Victor Gollancz, English price 12/6. A CORPSE FOR CHARYBDIS, by Susan Gilruth; Hodder and Stoughton, iene price 10/6. WILDFIRE A MIDNIGHT, by Mary Stewart; Hodder and Stoughton, English price 10/6. THE HIDDEN FACE, by Victor Canning; Hodder and Stoughton, English price 10/6. N her fifth book, The Long Body, Helen McCloy has done it again. It is not so long, involved or original as Thro’ a Glass Darkly, but it has the same psychic mystery and tension, the same prickly effect at midnight, and is admirably written. A woman hates another woman with good reason, murders her mentally, and comes out of a sleep-walk to find her killed just as planned, and by someone who seems to have known of the intention. The psychiatrist Basil Willing finds the (continued on next page)

BOOKS (continued from previous page) solution in the past, and thereby explains the title. "The long body" is an Eastern philosophical conception of a man’s being; he should be judged, not by what he is at any given moment, but by his whole life. Here a youthful escapade leads to several deaths forty years later. On. the other hand, Jean Potts’s second story is rather a sad falling off from the sprightly and beautifully titled Go, Lovely Rose. Not that Death of a Stray Cat is unexciting or badly written, but that plot and characters are relatively dull. The victim is a pathetic trollop with four bedfellows besides a worthless husband, which even in these

days seems slightly excessive. The idea is that some men fall for this type as people do for stray cats. Perhaps so, but I couldn’t work up much interest in which of the five killed this stray human. The disappointment is even deeper with The Last Enemy, by Barton Roueche, who did so well in the real life Annals of Medical ,Detection. A professional criminal accidentally kills a domestic servant, whose lover he is, and disappears, feeling he is safe. One naturally expects a chase; but he fades out, and we are treated to a long and boring study of the girl's employer uhder police suspicion, until the strain produces another tragedy. In the most enjoyable of this lot, A Corpse for Charybdis, the reader voyages

to the Mediterranean and the Adriatic in a Yugoslav cruise-cargé ship, Susan Gilruth collects an assortment of passengers, including a Gorgon of an English ‘school-marm, depicts them with sympathy and wit, and involves them in a disappearance in the Straits of Messina. The descriptions of the Dalmatian coast and ‘the reconstruction of its storied past are uncommonly well done. "Over the Sea to the Skye" is one of the most romantic phrases, but in Mary Stewart’s Wildfire at Midnight, the hotel, tourists find inherent romance taking a tragic turn. The old pagan gods are invoked to cause more deaths than I can easily stomach, but the mystery is well sustained and the pictures of the island’s crags and mists are painted with feeling by one who evidently knows. Skye very well. The determination of an innocent man gaoled for murder to escape and find the murderer, is an excellent theme for a thriller. He has to investigate and hide at the same time. The hero of Victor Canning’s The Hidden Face also finds that someone is persistently after | his blood. All this makes for terrific pace and piled up excitement. The dénouement is so shattering that for me it deflates most of the excitement, but you may think the surprise worth

while.

A.

M.