This Month’s New Reading

f|THIS could be Who-Dunit Month X in that we have received three samples of the art—one Australian, one American and one English. The American and the Australian are old friends—none other than Earie Stanley Gardner and Arthur Upfield, shining stars in this particular firmament. The Englishman is a new-comer to us, Leo Bruce.

Death in the Mansion

HAVING satisfactorily disposed of the Vagabond Virgin, Lazy Lover, Dubious Bridegroom, etc., Perry Mason, that extraordinary combination of lawyer and detective who could exist nowhere else but in the USA (and probably only in the imagination of Mr. Gardner), now turns to The Case of the .Negligent Nymph.

The title bears about as much relation to the story, as did their titles to the other Gardner stories — which is very little. However, this is ESG in a somewhat mellower mood than usual—the theme is not so rabidly Tough American; there is somewhat less trifling with the Law, or screaming about the country in high-powered cars which are standard equipment in most American thrillers.

A large part of the story is devoted to the Court-room proceedings, with Mason defending the law^r e^n N him h to the ascendant and pure deduction to methods' 6 P ‘ aCe ° f stron ™ It makes a change. (Published by William Heinemann, Ltd.

Australian price, 15/6.) ..

Death m the Hoo-Jahs

A RTHUR Upfield, although Classed as a “mystery” writer, produces stories that are read as much for their authentic Australian background as for the adventures of his unique detective, Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte. Perhaps the secret of this is that he leaves the background to speak for itself and avoids the pitfall of instructing his readers on things Australian. The temptation to do this through the mouths of his characters must be considerable, as the majority of his readers are outside Australia, but the result is a smooth-flowing narrative, product of a mastercraftsmjm.

The scene for Bony’s latest e £9 a P ade tT/ie Battling Prophet ), shifts to South Australia—not far from Mount Gambler—and concerns the death of Ben Wickham, longrange weather forecaster.

According to the police and the medical profession, Wickham, who

was 75, died of alcoholic poisoning —in delirium tremens. According to John Luton, 84, Ben’s drinking mate, he did not die of the “hoo jahs,” but was murdered.

Ben had forecast a long drought and, according to Luton • “The farml ers didn’t do any fallowing last summer and autumn They didn’t sow any crops this winter So they didn’t buy any superphosphate and other manures. They didn’t any ~m a chinery last year and they won t be buying any this year.

They sold their stock and sacked hands. . . And none of them, neither farmers nor graziers, lashed out a of money on work and >Y a f> es and machinery just to watch lt: burned to by the sun. So none of them are in the hands of “1e banks and financial concerns, f nst ead of the drought bankrupt -1I em » they re all living comfort ably on their fat.”

The finance companies and the big merchants and the banks were it ” An d, according to Knocker Harris, a mu tual friend, so were the “Gov’ments, Federal and State.” ■ Ben an d Luton had been periodic boozers throughout their long as spciation—twice, sometimes three tln J9 s a year, all barriers went down l i i? tll T^H iey themselves into the DTs on gin, whisky, rum, or Their V Tasr a bender^n Ct6 ?in P °h S « l rt lasted for thp thrpT°wPoPc. n d Ben’s death hut ore wh ° SUpplies a complete encyclopedia a n few 0 ?ours d before ff h^s S dM e th

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The reader learns to know these eccentric bush characters with Bony and follows him to the in eyitabJe solution along the by-ways of Australian small-town life (Published by William Heinemann Ltd Australian price, 13/3.)

Death of a Maunr

Ul d mayor 11/’HEN the Mayor of Oldhaven T? disappeared off his town’s amusement pier and was washed up on the beach a few days later as a bloated corpse no ex planation was quickly forthcoming The police were pleased to accept the coroner’s unadorned verdict “Found Drowned,” and as sunlieht on golden sands was the keynote of Oldhaven’s tourist publicity it was considered by the city fathers that the Mayor’s corpse on the beach was something best forgotten.

“Nothing empties hotels so quickly ” grumbled the Chief Constable who had an interest in the Aberdare Hotel.

Oldhaven may have got its wish had it not been for the inquisitive nose of Mr. Carolus Deene a school

master who dabbled in amateur detection.

An f .a.q. thriller, gruesome enough in spots to satisfy the most blood-thirsty, and supplying, in cidentally, an authentic picture of the unsophisticated delights of the typical English seaside resort. (Published by Peter Davies. Australian price, 15/6.)

The Landrat Began it

THE insatiable curiosity of the average human being over what goes on in his insides, makes books with a medical background

perennially popular. The Great

Temptation, written by Hans Kades, and translated from German by E. E. Ashton, will appeal to many on that count alone. In addition, it is an interesting psychological study of a man who was tempted, and fell. Unlike a great many modern books, it has a plot.

Gerbrand was a brilliant German medical student when war broke out, with a year to go to qualify.

But before this could happen he was pushed into the fighting on the Eastern front and spent years in the confusion of military hospitals and prisoner-of-war camps.

Although not “qualified” he became a skilful surgeon.

After the war he returned to a battered Germany. He was penni less, starving, without a job but de termined to continue his career.

At this point, an official with the somewhat extraordinary title of Landrat, crosses his path. The Landrat owes his life to Gerbrand, although Gerbrand has forgotten him amongst the thousands of wounded he attended during the war.

Out of gratitude, the Landrat, who believes Gerbrand qualified, offers him an appointment as a surgeon in a hospital. Gerbrand is in no physical or mental shape to withstand the temptation, and accepts.

Gerbrand, of course, carries on his career brilliantly at the hos pital, although haunted by the fear of being found out. He makes things even more difficult for him self when he carries out success fully a delicate heart operation that has rarely or never been per formed before. This fame-making effort threatens his desire for anonymity but the real crisis comes when his conscience urges him to assist a colleague in trouble while his lesser-self urges him to play it safe.

There is sufficient gore and guts and rotting stomachs and broken down lungs in this story to satisfy the most biological-minded. But it is not a cheering book. The German taste for starkness in literature—a soupcon of shenanigin in the Beer Garden, and lashings of sin and woe and poverty and graft and the cussedness of human-beings gener ally—presents the Teutons as a

melancholy race.

There is, at all events, nothing sweet and delicate about this sort of writing and in that regard it is a change. What is more, Author Kades actually achieves a happy ending which leads one to suppose that even amongst strong German literary traditionalists, there is a sneaking desire to engage in the Pursuit of Happiness. (Published by Angus and Robertson, Ltd.

Australian price, 16/-.)

The Wild Frontier

SOME Australian reviewers have been more doubtful of Nevil Shute’s latest book —Beyond the Black Stump —than of most of his other Australian stories. He has not been here long enough, they say; or his characters are ex aggerated and not typical of Aus tralia.

So far as we know, there is no rule in story writing to require an author to have his characters “average” or “typical.” If they were average they would probably be too dull to be characters, anyhow.

Certainly the Regans, from beyond the black stump in Western Aus tralia, are an eccentric mob —but there are plenty of eccentrics in the Australian out-back. If they were average citizens they would be liv ing in one of the inner suburbs of Sydney or Melbourne.

Nonetheless, Mr. Shute has some habits that are infuriating to the Australian reader. It seems in credible that any graduate of the University of Western Australia should not know all there was to know about a “place called Eton,” or a “place called Harley Street.”

He drags in Australian institutions —such as the Flying Doctor service —by the hair of their heads, apparently for the instruction of overseas readers; and in the de scription of the air journey from Perth to Sydney and then across the Pacific to America becomes so close to being travel-brochure that it does not matter.

Apart from that it is a good Shute story, bas°d on the premise that when A Boy from Alabama meets the Girl from Gundagai, certain things are sure to happen.

In this case the boy, Stanton, comes from Oregon and is a geologist .with an oil prospecting party; and the girl, Mollie, is one of 11 white Regans (and uncounted part-white Regans) from Laragh Station, 300 miles from Onslow, on the West Australian coast.

The Regans are eccentrics in the grand manner and delightful, meaty characters, but the point Shute tries to make—and makes well in the end—is that they are eccentric because they are pioneers, not pioneers because they are eccentric.

Mollie eventually returns to the small Oregon town of Hazel to get acquainted with Stanton’s folks but

here she finds that pioneering, although an aura of romance has grown around it, was finished with 80 years ago and the accent now is on respectability and non-devia tion from the norm. How the two young people work out their problems against their different backgrounds, forms the climax of Shute’s story.

As well it is instructive, enter taining and holds the interest to the last sentence. (Published by William Heinemann, Ltd.

Australian price, 15/6.)

1942—New Britain

Expendables

WHEN the Japanese invaded New Britain in January, 1942, there was a force of about 1,400 men at Rabaul to oppose them. Part of this defence consisted of half-a dozen obsolete Wirraway planes, which the Japanese shot out of the sky with no trouble at all; and an anti-aircraft artillery unit of about 54, in the command of Major David Selby, a barrister in civilian life.

They had two old-fashioned 3-in. guns.

The Japanese landed at Rabaul in the dawn of January 23, 1942, and this did not come as a surprise.

But the events that followed close upon that landing still remain part of unexplained history. Those were the days when the war was still be ing fought on wishful-thinking.

The garrison troops and the several hundred male civilians left in the town still carried on in the belief that Someone Higher Up had a Plan. When it came to the point, of course, no one had a plan.

Within a matter of hours, the Jap anese overwhelmed the defenders and the command came for very man to look out for himself.

In this way, troops, Civilians, native labourers from other parts of the Territory, and members of the native police-force were simply

abandoned to shift for themselves.

It was the all-time high in examples of Australian official bungling; criminal negligence would perhaps be a better description.

A large number of the civilians and troops did not leave the town and soon became prisoners of the Japanese. These were shipped away to Japan about June, 1942, in the Montevideo Maru, which was sunk with all hands en route. Many of the civilians and several hundreds of the troops took to the New Britain bush, and in this adventure the civilians came out best. Few of those who attempted it perished —but casualties amongst the troops were high due in large degree to their inexperience of New Guinea bush conditions, coupled with malaria.

No one at that stage had thought to instruct troops in jungle survival techniques and cases were recorded where men starved simply because they did not recognise native food when they saw it.

Some years ago, Mr. J. K.

McCarthy, now a senior officer in. the P-NG Administration, but then.

Assistant District Officer, Talasea,, described in a series of articles in: PIM, how about 240 troops were; rescued by civilians from the northi coast of New Britain and taken safely to Australia. The story of how about 130 other troops got away from the south coast in the Laura hada (skippered by Mr. Ivan Champion) has been left to the telling of Major Selby, who com manded the Rabaul anti-aircraft) battery, in a book recently pub lished.

The heroic but useless sacrifice of the Wirraways; the Tol massacre; the floundering of the ill-prepared troops in the jungle; the ceaseless trek away from the Japs; rain and fever and hunger, sore feet, tropica ulcers and finally apathy—the fina.. stage before death. All but the strongest in spirit and in body soon fell victim of one of these and it fell to the lot of a handful of the hardiest to save the weakest from themselves, as well as from the more usual pitfalls of being fugitive. Thu is the Major’s story: but also then are courage and endurance, and tin worst in the Australian characten and the best; and humour.

Over-niceness in High Places hae failed to make use of native pohci; or labourers in defence of the Terri i tory for fear of offending the League of Nations and some of these loosed on the country in band!: became a menace. The villager! themselves, quick to realise that tin white men were getting out if could and leaving the country td the Japs, also became a hazard and were dealt with summarily be Major Selby and other officers i;i a manner worthy of the most cases hardened B-4.

Selby’s story is a straightforwan one of escape and survival; tlr military reasons as to why thea should have been placed in tlri harrowing position in which the

bund themselves are touched on liirectly but briefly, although that hey entertained his reason and in -elligence is obvious enough. He illows facts to speak for themselves, ind God knows, they are a suf iciently damning indictment.

The book has been given an at ractive dust-jacket and called Hell ind High Fever, to appeal to casual eaders, the majority of whom will ind it a well-written, fast moving itory of adventure and survival. For he very small minority, however — hose who were directly affected — t is more than that: A permanent ecord of a phase in Australian listory that too many people are lappy to forget. (Published by Currawong Publishing Co. Pty., td., Sydney. Australian price, 15/-.)

Reviewed Briefly

The Black Prince:—A Collec

ion of short stories by Shirley mn Grau, a young woman who has Iready gained some fame in the Jnited States as a writer in this ledium. Miss Grau is a Southerner nd most of her stories are about ■ouisiana and many of them are bout negroes and the so-called egro problem in so far as it applies t these people themselves. The tories are in the contemporary tanner and some are inclined to nd on a note of anti-climax, a

trait which will irritate some reader 8 who were raised on the O. Henry type of short story The writer, however, has real talent.

AnKiia^nriro 7 i Heinemann ' Ltd -' Australian price, 15/6.)

The Bunytp Of

ELBOw-a second volume S stories by Brian James. Most of the stories have appeared in Sydney Bulletin, and James is a follower of Bulletin tradition in short-story writing. Australian small-town life

is the theme—but Australian small town of last century rather than this; of horses and dogs and flies and h ea t ( where cars and radios and refrigerators and tarred roads are not . Most of the stories, therefore. fa&ve the air of period-pieces. There is a foreword b y Norman Lindsay, which he compares James to de Maupassant. Who are we to con tradict a Lindsay? (Published by Angus and Robertson, Ltd.

Australian price, 16/-.)