ACADEMIC BODIES

New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 901, 9 November 1956, Page 14

ACADEMIC BODIES

DEATH IN THE QUADRANGLE, by Eilis Dillon; Faber and Faber, English price 10/6. OLD HALL, NEW HALL, by Michael Innes; Victor Gollancz, English price 12/6. LANDSCAPE WITH DEAD DONS, by Robert Robinson; Victor Gollancz, English price 10/6. THE UNDOUBTED DEED, by Jocelyn Davey; Chatto and Windus, English price 13/6. ON the ground that they were bad advertisements, a university-minded dictator might consider censoring novels

of university life, including "detectives." Contact with immature minds that cannot answer back, a society somewhat walled-in and self-sufficient, and encouragement of narrow specialisation, tend to breed egotism and eccentricity. Perhaps professors are not really so odd as many of these stories make out, but the temptation to exploit such foibles for plot, character and satire ,is strong. Consider this batch of university scenes and flavours. In Death in the Quadrangle, Eilis Dillon presents again a retised professor of English who has written "purple" novels on the quiet ("It’s my misfortune that I taught like an angel and wrote like poor Poll"), and detects as a hobby. Returning to his Dublin college to lecture, he is confronted with the murder of the very unpleasant President. Professor Daly investigates in a familiar setting, and part of the fun of an agreeable book lies in the contrast between his understanding and the bewilderment of the official police in this academic zoo. The bright-

ness of the tale owes something to the Irish tang in characters and situations. The school of English figures largely in Old Hall, New Hall (English "provincial"), with a professor so different from Daly as to be an ass. Perhaps the absence of a real corpse (the only one is ancient and turns out to be a statue), helps to make. this the least convincing Michael Innes I have read. He treats a fantastic treasure hunt and young love with the erudition and style one expects (he is reputed to be a don himself), but the plot hasn’t the strength to carry the traffic, and the work of the place is made to look petty. There is a stronger air of belittlement in Landscape -with Dead Dons, a tale of Oxford by an under-thirty product, who must have been bursting with cleverness when he wrote. Robert Robinson conceived an original "starter" in a discovered Chaucer poem, and gave a new slant to murder when he stuck the corpse of a don among the statues on the college roof, but cleverness rather went to his head. There are too many | characters, and an excess of talk. This Oxford life faintly suggests the scurrying of disturbed insects. At the end, a | string of completely naked dons pursue a naked colleague-murderer through the streets in broad daylight. The implication that this is funny may not be universally accepted. I have included The Undoubted Deed because, though the scene is Lutyens’s British Embassy Building in Washington, the chief character is an Oxford don who illustrates my thesis and talks philosophy on the slightest provocation, perhaps rather too much for some readers. As he arrived on his secret mission, Ambrose Usher reflected that everybody, himself included, needed to get away from the inner contemplative life of | Oxford and be dropped into the world | of action. He struck a murder during a /highly diverting embassy party, and espionage, Congratulations to Jocelyn | Davey on creating this learned, amusing | human, and likeable little sleuth, on the | variety of other characters and on the | eittient pictures of diplomatic social

life in Washington.

A.

M.