This Month’s New Reading

Sex, Life and Death

in Pennsylvania

THE Book Society has puts its seal upon A Murder in Paradise (by Richard Gehman). We mention this fact only because it may mean something to PIM readers. It means nothing to us.

This somewhat extraordinary book tells a true story—the story of a sordid and brutal murder in Lancaster Pennsylvania, USA, in January, 1950, by a college student of a young woman.

Apparently it was something of a cause celebre at the time in America, but it is unlikely to have caused many ripples on the duck pond else where and the non-American reader might reasonably wonder why this particular crime has been singled cut for the meticulous treatment given it by Mr. Gehman.

For the student of the American scene or of American crime detec tion it has considerable merit, but in a desperate effort to include every detail of the crime and of the events that led up to it and the case histories of the principals, the author at times becomes exceedingly weari some.

British readers are likely to be left wondering if it is to be regarded as a serious presentation of a famous case or whether it is designed—with its jazzed-up title and long descrip tions of the murderer’s sex life —for popular appeal. Probably the latter.

Any nation which can stomach the Dragnet, radio and movie series of real crime, is likely to have un expected tastes in crime literature.

A medical witness said: “In my opinion his sex life was definitely abnormal. . . During his high school years and before, Gibbs (the murderer) had no sex relations at all.”

Amazing. (Published by Peter Davies, Ltd. Aus tralian price, 18/9.)

Plea for Christmas

ONLY in America, surely, could a parson become a public hero with a movie and a pop-song written about him. That is what happened to Peter Marshall, any how (The Man Called Peter), and as a result this year one of his Christmas sermons has been pub lished by Peter Davies Ltd. as a gift booklet. It is called Let’s Keep Christmas.

It is too late now for PIM readers for 1955, but the sentiments ex pressed in the sermon are all of the well-tried variety and will keep another year.

The book is attractively produced, with numerous humorous drawings and complete in its own envelope for mailing. It would be an accept able gift for one of one’s more sentimental friends (leave the blase off the list).

Subscribers to the Readers Digest will already have read the sermon.

You can take our word for it that the publishers have done an ex cellent job in preparing it as a gift book. Australian price 6/3.

Nightingale of

the North

According to publishers, an stories about the Pacific should have “Paradise” somewhere in their titles; and all books written about nursing should have “Lamp.” (The dim-witted please note that Lamp = Florence Nightingale = Nursing).

So we now have Lamp in the Snow (by Mary E. Hope), which is the experiences of a young nurse, fresh from a 900-bed hospital in a city, in the wilds of Canada’s frozen north.

Books about doctors, nurses and medicine generally are the present vogue and people who like to read about these things, with the human interest slant predominating, will find this particular Lamp standard fare.

As well as lively anecdote on nursing in less than favourable con ditions, the book does give a view of life in a primitive community “at the end of the road” where ignor ance still flourishes.

The heroine does not marry the doctor —he is middle-aged and woman proof—and Mary is usually delivering a baby when any of the other eligible swains of the district call to take her out.

General verdict: a good gift book for a young woman. (Published by Angus and Robertson, Sydney. Australian price, 16/-.)

Out of the Dust

and the Mulga

TWO books received this month complement each other. They are Justin Baynard by Jon Cleary; and Wealth in the Wilder ness by Arthur Groom.

Both are about the Australian far Outback —Northern Australia where conditions don’t come any tougher— and although Groom wanders further afield than Cleary both have the same background of cattle, natives and isolation.

There the real similarity ends be

cause Justin Bayard is a novel;; Groom’s story is factual. It is in teresting however, to compare ones, with the other and to see that the 9 novelist scores top marks fon authenticity. Cleary’s last book was Climate of Courage —a story of the war in New Guinea, which received: a very good reception from re viewers.

It is not impossible that Aus tralia’s great Outback should become the literary glamour-land of the future, taking the place that eastf and southern Africa had in the period between the wars.

These northern cattle lands should: abound in the right kind of back ground to appeal to the armchairt adventurer, and little ingenuity is required of the author to fit in the right kind of plot.

The country itself is certainly no less attractive than Africa. Evem the advantage that African authors once had of being able to dispose of unwanted characters by having therm eaten by lions or trampled to death! by rogue elephants, no longer holds, good; all the South African game is now safely corralled in the game re serves. There is still, of course, that, uncut gem, the Australian himselfl He perhaps makes less of a hero than the Remittance Men and Dukes’ younger sons who obliged the writer of things African.

JUSTIN BAYARD was a police-i man, headquartered at Fitzroy Crossing, in the Kimberley country of N-W Australia. It was. not a glamour job, because in Aus-; tralia —north-west as elsewhere —a policeman is only a cop; often just; a “mug copper.”

Most Of Bayard’s job consisteo of apprehending tribal murderersa and, unlike the Canadian Mounties who had only to get their manr Baynard’s real trouble commenceo once he had his. The difficulty wau to keep Emu Foot amongst the liv-' 1 ing until he could be handed over to; the processes of the white manY justice at Wyndham.

During the course of his dutiesa Bayard brings Emu Foot into Kootapatamba Station, there to; await the plane. But it is at tho end of the Wet, the airstrip is un i usable and Bayard must resign himself to several weeks’ wait.

At this remote station he find! the young owner, Tad Kirkbrid© and his wife, Julie, for both oc whom Sydney is a spiritual home The overseer, Palady and hiii daughter Blanche, who is parti native. Crispin, who has been Julie’s lover—presumably to pasa the tedious hours of the Wet. (Hav\ ing tired of the affair he hesitates to end it, fearing that this couloi interfere with his desire to interesa Tad in Beef Lift, Crispin’s idea or slaughtering cattle in the outback

and air-freighting them to the ses coast).

In addition to the above there a b the station natives —tribal broth© of Emu Foot, who take a dim viej of his being incarcerated (in a hut boab tree).

A complicating factor is added this brew when Bayard au Blanche begin a passionate loc affair.

The scene is authentic and Cleae has no trouble with his ms characters, but his females pas ticularly Julie —are uncon vincin Julie, according to the book, “bitchey.” There is no adjectf: more suitable for describing Jui but one is left with the convictii that she is a bitch less because the way she behaves than becau the author says she is.

Julie was a Sydney social butt© fly, she had been six months in ti Kimberleys, most of them in ti wet; she hated the isolation, ti flies, the climate and the enviroc ment. She had very little to and nothing to take her mind < herself. It is a pretty safe bet ttrd 95 per cent, of women with simili background, would have reacti like Julie—and most of them wou have been more convincing bitchf Because she is a pest, Julie murdered. And because Bayard J a policeman he feels that he hr better do something about it (if yv are looking for detective fiction yy will be disappointed in this polio man’s methods) but to his amaz. ment, and the reader’s bewilderme:6 the others, white and black, a against doing anything.

“She is better dead,” is the ge eral opinion.

It is necessary for the story tli Julie be removed. But nothing the preceding narrative is likely convince anyone used to the cuss© ness of human nature that Juj deserved to be murdered for M very ordinary sins. For her to hs returned to Sydney and run off wh an old lover would have suited ti purpose of the story as well, ar fitted more with the Julie chsj acter.

Julie was evidently designed as very grand arch-villainess. TI character does not jell and s emerges only as a pestiferous ferns And as Julie is the pivot of tr story, this is its weakness.

Nonetheless, we hope Cleary vr write again about the AustraliJ Outback—when he has learned m«i about bitches. (Published by Collins. Sydney. tralian price, 16/-.) IN 1952, Arthur Groom (who d£ shortly before this book w published) loaded up a sim utility truck and headed westws across Australia from Brisbane.

There appears to have been reason why he did this, and certainly gives none, and one is li

guess that he went to gather terial for a book, and that this the book. t seems probable that he first ;led the title of the book —Wealth the Wilderness —and then sought material and wrote the story to A century ago, in the fashion those days, he could have added alternative title: “Or How they Making-out in the Outback ”

Generally, it is a survey of the pie who are thinly spread across itralia’s great north —the peanut tvers of the Daly Waters, the Air f enterprise of Glenroy in the iberleys, the many scattered ion people from the Centre to North, the mica miners, the ekeepers, the road builders, :kers, the outback pub keepers, he fact that the year Groom se to go was a year of intense ight, following the failure of the isoon rains, adds to the interest the story rather than detracts n it. For this is an area in :h flood and drought follow each ir in inevitable sequence—facts must be reckoned with by all dwell therein, ice the reader has got over his al feeling of not knowing where s going, and has settled down

to an unexplained, if exhaustive, visit with Mr. Groom to every out post from Glenroy to the Diamantina, he will likely be fascinated by the descriptions of this vast, sparsely populated land stretching north wards to the very doors of teeming Asia.

He will probably be struck too (in this and in Cleary’s book) with the increasing part played here in the

North by the aborigine. It is the aborigine who, in cowboy shirt and cowboy hat, has taken the place of the European station hand; it is the aborigine who, with wife and piccaninnies, lives in a humpy next the government bore and tends the diesel engine that pumps the life giving water. It is the aborigine who tinkers with the station tractor and drives the truck and the jeep; his

-omen who supply the household ibour around the stations.

For generations, Australians have een told to “look what you have □ne to the Abo,” whereupon they ave been smitten with such a guilty mscience that they have failed to Dserve that in the North and entre, the problem now seems to » working itself out in compromise, nd that the Aborigine is no longer dying race. These large runs are citenable without the help of the atives and although the purists are tely to regard work on a cattle ation a poor substitute for tribal fe, few of these natives are likely i agree.

In a way, the Outback has pro ded a better solution to its labour oblem than Papua or New Guinea, here the labour force is constantly tanging. In Australia’s north the itives identify themselves with in vidual stations; generations of the me family live and grow up— cept for their periodical walk louts—on the same property.

It would be interesting to look 100 ars into the future and see how e two systems, both under Aus ilian direction, work out: Whether e Australian native will come out it much worse off than his care lly coddled cousin across the Coral a in the jungles of P-NG.

Published by Angus and Robertson, Iney. Australian price, 21/-J