Smoked Salmon

On A Diet Of Smoked Salmon

A dozen successful novels testify that Storm Jameson is an ac complished writer, without any book reviewer having to go on record to state the fact, but she certainly sets her own peculiar standard.

THE story of two men which she tells in The Road from the Monument is unlikely to have evolved anywhere but against the English background which she gives it. No where else—in spite of the advance of democracy—is the right thing, the right school, the right university

and the right background, still so important.

Gregory Mott had the wrong back ground but the right instinct for the right thing. He climbed on the backs of those who happened to be available, became a successful writer, entered into an aseptic marriage partnership with an aristocratic wife and was appointed Director of Rutley Institute of Art. Even his religion —about which he wrote with some conviction stemmed from the highest branches of the Established Church.

Lambert Corry’s background was slightly better. He went to the right university and became a civil servant, with literary leanings. In childhood

as Mott’s benefactor, but in life the roles were reversed was a matter of considerable n between the two “friends”. ; turning point in the lives of nen came when cracks appeared e monument which Mott has to himself and which Corry, sycophantic indulgence, has 1 to maintain. ; Jameson characters are given ing tediously precious. Fine of prose drip from their lips hey live on a diet of smoked n, grouse and the best wines, 1 the right years. A couple ;arty types who guzzled beer ate rare steak might have ed the right amount of comic to this novel which, in spite other merits, has almost no ur at all.

3 Road From The Monument,

xed by Macmillan. 22/6.)

illers in

)S D thrillers from the publishing louse of Bles are completely ;nt in content: Dead of a terplot is a first effort by Simon nom de plume of a university er who makes his mystery d a university college hostel. 2 Killing Chase is the sixth :r from Roger Simons, with less j academic and more gore about i both, Scotland Yard get their

men although in Counterplot, not without the help of Senior Lecturer Adam Ludlow who brings some un expected talents into discovering who killed young Jenny Hexham, leader of the College Communist Party.

Women are the victims also in The Killing Chase, chief of them being Miss Bufton, “good-looking in a harsh cash-register fashion” owner of a chain of 17 grocery stores. If Miss Bufton hadn’t been so sure of herself she wouldn’t have investigated the noise in her Kensington shop, wouldn’t have surprised the safe breakers, wouldn’t have ended a gory corpse and wouldn’t have been in strumental in adding another feather to the cap of Chief Detective- Inspector Wace.

(Dead Op A Counterplot And

THE KILLING CHASE. Published by Geoffrey Bles Ltd. Price 17/- and 14/6 respectively.)

Forty Years With

The Same Woman

JANE GILLESPIE specialises in human relationships not love stories, in the old fashioned sense and her latest novel, The Marrying Kind, continues this exploration.

Dr. Martin Cunlip was one of those pointless kind of men who never seem to get out of life what they might. He married young and then spent the next 40 years being haunted by visions of “ideal women” who, unfortunately had a way of manifesting themselves in concrete form.

Although Martin’s affairs are not of the fleshy variety, his mental spasms over his Lettices, Lucys, Nicolettes and others do not make him an odds-on favourite in the matrimonial stakes.

THE MARRYING KIND. Published by Peter Davies. 20/-.)

M.E. Ingredients

For Adventure

ITS doubtful whether Gordon Landsborough can be called an author in the ordinary sense of the word; literary-mill, atomic powered, might be nearer the mark.

Although still on the right side of 50, he has produced over 90 books —of which The Gulf of Pain is the latest; has, in his time, edited 10 newspapers and magazines; and is now a publisher of paper-backs.

Since the war (when he was in volved in the desert campaign in North Africa) he has introduced what he calls automation to book writing: He dictates them into a tape-recorder.

Although this wholesale onslaught

erature is unlikely to produce a assic, his stories of action and ture don’t seem to suffer from eatment. > current novel is a modern involving a new oil-rich sheik in the Middle East and all the ns that, in these days, can go t. :re is the conflict between the tic Sheikh, who wants the oil ted at any cost, and the rabble people who have been simmer i the point of revolt for years. :re are the paid agitators and opaganda that spills from Cairo ; Cavanagh, the British Consul, fears were genuinely based on experience in Middle Eastern tions”; and the minions of the mpany who arrived in something Doked like an invasion fleet and d only to get on with the job.

S GULP OF PAIN. Published by Davies. 20/-.)

iy From it All

Mexico

tN ardent getters away from it 11 tend to take their environ with them, and particularly so y are Americans. That is the n of the song of J. L. Nusser n his second novel, The Burn ridge, has his characters cavort i Mexico.

Mexico, where Abel Winteridge bm and Carol Cleavis live be the United States are too com alised, basic American stan —especially about things like differ in almost all aspects from atin way of looking at things. 5 of family obligation on the hand are almost as far-reaching Polynesia and the end result t the foreigner who settles in, ting to have the best of two s, is likely to find himself very on the horns of a Mexican ma. There seems few ways uerican can burn his bridges— st in Mexico. 5 BURNING BRIDGE. Published by nann. 22/6.)

The Younger

lade

JNGSTERS who have followed idventures of the Branxome y in their cruiser the Dabchick, 5e pleased to meet them again ?pomuk of the River, by Roger igton. This time they are taking mmer cruise along the River , in Bavaria.

Nepomuk is a sort of religious :, with a five-star halo and is atron saint of bridges, but this ular one was stolen.

This affords the Dahchick’s crew an excuse for some sleuthing and gives Mr. Pilkington a chance to describe the Main and later on, the famous rapids of the Rhine gorge, (NEPOMUK OP THE RIVER. Published by Macmillans. 17/-.)

How a Train

Became a Buoy

NORMAN BATE is an American artist and engraver of some note and occasionally he writes and/or illustrates a book for children—as for example, Vulcan, A Picture Story.

Vulcan was an old steam train which was the very latest thing when ladies wore floor-length skirts and feather-boas, but with the coming of diesel-electrics he had outgrown his usefulness. He went back to the melting pot in the steel mill and finally emerged as a warning buoy, with a light and a whistle, anchored off the harbour approaches.

The story is, naturally enough, very well illustrated in two-tone, and most six-to-eight year olds will find it adequately entertaining. But unless parents are very enthusiastic about giving their offspring the right kind

of artistic background they may very well boggle at the price for what amounts to no more than a few minutes reading. How to make children’s books cheap enough and good must be one of the minor headaches of publishers who specialise in this kind of book production. (VULCAN. Macmillans. 14/3.)

The Middle Way

THE case made out by Donald Swanson in The Freedom Killers for a midway course in South Africa may not be very convincing but if read simply as a thriller it has its merits.

While Stewart, a newspaperman, is putting his Johannesburg paper to bed one night, members of an African gang are being briefed as shock troops in a planned uprising. The police break it up and three of the ring leaders escape— one of them being the ex-house-boy of Stewart and his family. They break in and take refuge in Stewart’s isolated house a few miles out of the city and hold his wife and small son as hostages in the best traditions of American

gangsterism, whose methods and manners have been copied.

This is the bare bones of the theme to which is added embellishments in the form of Stewart’s and Mary’s own personal problems and much arguing the respective merits of apartheid as against African nationalism and, of course, Stewart’s middle-of-the-road theories.

It may be wondered whether in the sort of set-up he describes, steer ing a mid-course is now possible, but at least the novel has the virtue of being written in Africa by some one who has lived there for the last 13 years, and is not long-distance theorising by someone who has never been nearer to it than a protest march to Trafalgar Square.

(The Freedom Killers. Peter

Davies. 20/-.)

What’s New in Paper Backs

Cape Fear And Man Trap,

both by John D. MacDonald, modern American thriller writer. “Cape Fear” has been made into a movie under the title of “The Executioner” with Gregory Peck in the role of the family man who, after 14 years, is suddenly confronted with the brutal Army sergeant whom he was instru mental in getting a so-called life sentence. “Man Trap” is also being filmed; it’s a tale about an alleged easy-to-get $3,000,000 and a female who’s described as a “Lush”. (Great Pan; 4/-.)

Gideon’S Staff, By J. J.

Marric, one of the now well-known series about Scotland Yard. This time Gideon nails his colours to the mast when Whitehall orders a general cut down in expenses and he sets out to prove that crime waves and over worked staff go together. (Great Pan; 4/-.) JEOPARDY, by Manfred Conte— a Continental thriller of the murky underworld of international forgery —and women. (Fontana; 5/6.)

Champagne For One, By

Rex Stout. This is another episode in the life of out-sized sleuth Nero Wolfe who specialises in solving the unsolvable. A beautiful girl who has seemingly poisoned herself figures in the mystery. (Fontana; 4/-.)

One Step From Murder, By

Laurence Meynell. Fenton had made good since he left gaol—until a pale man murmured a number to him.

He knew then it was blackmail and that he would either have to fight, or run. (It says so on the back.) (Fontana; 4/-.)

ALAS BABYLON, by Pat Frank, c also be called “The Sidewinder That 1 Away”, because that’s what happi When the missile, fired from a uni the US Mediterranean fleet, went ai and landed in Syria, the Russians tho that This Was It and let fly with ei thing they had. A small pocke human life in Florida escaped the ge: devastation and had to try to g( living with itself, and the fall-out. I the sort of novel to go over big in US where the current panic is fall-out and fall-out-shelters. (Pan Gi

The Ship That Died Op Sham]

Nicholas Monsarrat. A collectioi 10 short stories and a postscript tells how and why they were wr: They cover crime, suspense, whimsy, of course, the sea. (Great Pan; 4/-

We Are The Living, By Er

Caldwell. A sort of “On Our Select with sex and the Deep South of United States. Twenty short storii “life, elemental and raw”. Don’t we didn’t warn you. (Great Pan; SAINT ERRANT, by Leslie Char Continuing the Saint’s adventurei America, amongst the “dubious damei met there. (Great Pan).

Death Against The Clock

Anthony Gilbert. The fatal assau] an old spinster, that looked just that, until Arthur Crook got on the Crook is a sort of English versio Perry Mason. At any rate, he lawyer. (Great Pan).

ONIONHEAD, by Weldon Hill third printing of this paper-back, customers can’t be wrong. It wa “Uproarious American Bestseller”, I that. About a boy who was intei in food and sex. (Which ones an He joined the Coast Guards to care of the first (they made hi cook); and it seemed to solve the 1 also. (Pan Giant).

When To Call The Doctor, B

John Vincent. This is not exad first-aid book —although it does tell in the case of accidents and inj what to do till the doctor comes, is more properly a description ol health hazards, and how to cope them, that the average household is to meet in a normal march through (Great Pan).

The Angel Op Terror, By ]

Wallace. First published 40 years which makes it rather old, even i Wallace. This is its second printii a paper-back—some people like to c them, as they do old jazz records. 0 Pan).

The Case Of The Musical

And The Case Of The Gr

EYED SISTER, by Erie Stanley Gai (Who else?) The Green-Eyed Sist a conventional Gardner—Perry M Della Street, Paul Drake, the Di Attorney—the lot. Musical Cow departure from the orthodox—it d( even read like Gardner. Perry am gang are missing and the thing t with a bunch of tourists in Eli (Great Pan).

THE GOLD OP TROY, by Robert P The extraordinary and factual stoi Heinrich Schliemann, the eccc millionaire who in the last 20 years c life turned to archaeology and in the quarter of the 19th century made of the most extraordinary discovers the buried cities of ancient Gi (Pan Giant). (Our copies from Wm. Collins (Over Ltd. Great Pan, 4/-; Pan Giants,