TOP SECRET SERVICE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 920, 29 March 1957, Page 13

TOP SECRET SERVICE

BE SHOT FOR SIXPENCE, by Michael Gilbert; Hodder and Stoughton, English ee 12/6. THE OTHER ISLAND, by E. . Clements; Hodder and Stoughton, English price 12/6. NIGHT DROP, by Stephen ansome; Victor Gollancz, English price 10/6. GIDEON’S WEEK, by J. J. Marric; Hodder and Stoughton, English price 12/6. THE BARBERTON INTRIGUE, by Seldon Truss; Hodder and Stoughton, English price 11/6. THE TWO HUNDRED GHOST, by Henrietta Hamilton; Hodder and Stoughton, En§lish price 10/6. THE VOICE OF MURDER, by Margaret Erskine; Hodder and Stoughton, English price 11/6. RUN, by Margaret Shedd; Victor Gollancz, English price 12/6. F Michael Gilbert is not "the greatest post-war arrival in crime fiction" (an English reviewer), he is certainly good and very dependable. Be Shot for Sixpence is his starkest story, and its concern with secret service on the Hungarian frontier gives it a topical interest. The English narrator repels at first, but we find he is an ex-prisoner of war (as is Gilbert himself), and has seen terrible things. What happens to this agent is most exciting and tense, and so full of uncertainty that it is difficult to be sure, even at the end, who was straight and who was double-crossing. If this picture of ruthlessness encountered is only a fraction justified, it explains the Hungarian loathing for the secret police. Miss Clements is another safe bet. This time Alister Woodhead investigates leakage in a secret experimental station on a small Welsh island. On another island is a monastery, and the affairs of the establishments become intertwined, with adventures from which Woodhead escapes finally by the thickness of goldleaf. After Michael Gilbert, there is an agreeable infusion of sweetness and light; but Britain is not Hungary. Another established writer, Stephen Ransome, brings off in Night Drop a first-rate blackmail thriller. Those New York private sleuths, Cole and Speare, again seem to have only one client, and are again torn between co-operation and non-co-opegation with the police. The solution is a masterpiece of surprise, and will give the reader a glow of satisace Full marks for this Olympic nish. I recommended J. J. Marric’s Gideon’s Day, a round in the life of a Scotland Yard superintendent, as an_ excellent picture of varied police activity. I can |

do the same for Gideon’s Week, written on the same lines. The central problem is an escape of prisoners from gaol, with one of them bent on vengeance. Gideon, now promoted Commander, is a very likeable policeman. Seldon Truss’s latest, The Barberton Intrigue, gives us murder and blackmail] in a London departmental store, with, among the characters, a beauty without morals, an ex-crook who is boss of the business, a young righter of wrong who (continued on next page)

BOOKS (continyed from previous page) finds romance behind the counter, and our old friend Inspector Chudleigh. A sound job. I take Henrietta Hamilton (The Two Hundred Ghost) and Margaret Erskine (The Voice of Murder) to be beginners. Both have something to learn. Henrietta Hamilton chooses a London shop that deals in rare books, and gives her tale an interesting literary flavour. Margaret Erskine overcrowds her stage, présents her murderer as candidate for hero, and assigns him two murders with an inadequate motive. I just don’t believe it, The cult of child psychology goes distressingly to seed in Margaret Shedd’s "Run. A baby is murdered, and its fifteen-year-old brother goes into hiding in the town, with authority after him as a suspect. For 250 pages we are given, in closely-pressed detail, this boy’s movements and thoughts, tied up with the psychological history of his parents. The

tension of the run and the chase is bogged up a glue-pot road. I have seldom found a book so difficult to finish.

A.

M.