This Month’s

Novels

The novels this month are the only items that vary the monotony of the all-Australian flavour of our reading.

Two are by Scots, about Scotland, and both would have been easier to understand if the publishers had seen fit to include maps of the land north of the Solway. Except for High landers, born and bred, the topo graphy is completely baffling.

THE Fifty-Five rebellion is the background for a romantic historical novel by Nigel Tranter, and the title. Gold for Prince Charlie, indicates the plot.

As the clans dispersed into the Highlands after their defeat at Culloden Moor, near Inverness, and Prince Charles Edward escaped to Skye with a small personal body guard, two French ships came in to Loch nan Uamh to land powder and ammunition and what was a contemporary fortune in louis d’or for the Jacobites. Had it happened two days earlier it would likely have changed the fate of the so-called Rebellion and the history of Europe. As it was, the prospect of unlimited money on men who had lost everything—their homes, their families, their names and their right to jive—was instantaneous and demoralising.

It was then that Duncan MacGregor, son of Gregor Black Knee MacGregor, nephew of Rob

took the self-appointed task of ling the gold, or as much of it e could lay his hands on, for *e Charlie. )w he does it provides the swift n of the story. Although old rically, it is modern in context, way Tranter tells it. Even machs will find it good, fast nture reading; and blown-away > may decide, even at this late

day, to join the Scottish National Party and work for Home Rule for Scotland.

(Gold For Prince Charlie. Pub

lished by Hodder & Stoughton Ltd. 20/-.) A different dish of haggis is Maelstrom, by W. H. Murray. This is an Us and Them international spy ring affair, full of disappearing scientists, M. 1.5. and American Intelligence Agency—all very much 1963.

Interwoven with it is a great deal of yachting lore and mountaineering, in keeping with the author’s own hobbies, he being a yachtsman and mountaineer of international repute.

During the course of the thriller, the characters dash up and down lochs, in an out of the Cairngorm mountains, and the final climax is reached in a whirlpool in the Strait of Corrivreckam off the coast of Argyll. (MAELSTROM. Published by Seeker & Warburg. 22/6.) An Oriental Shangri-la figures in The Valley of Lotus House, an adventure-thriller by James Norman.

When a famous Chinese scholar, Dr.

Li, disappears between Hong Kong and Formosa, his American friend Wilson secretly enters China to try to get him back.

He doesn’t succeed but stumbles upon a legendary Chinese paradise, Shan Ti, where a fabulous Chinese warlord has managed to isolate him self from Communism. There Wilson falls in love with the warlord’s daughter and finally rescues her and not Dr. Li.

The story opens in Upper Burma, with Wilson staggering into a mission hospital carrying the half-dead girl in his arms. For those who like their thrillers with Inscrutable Eastern overtones, this one can be said to cover a lot of territory.

(The Valley Of Lotus House.

Published by Peter Davies. 22/6.) Bernard Thompson’s second novel, O Tell Me Pretty Maiden follows on the tradition established by his first (Love in Quiet Places ) in that it is a saga of English lowbrow village life. Economical in style but lavish with dialogue the story is narrated by teen-age, crippled Nicky Williams. A stern Nonconformist father, a mother who makes two-bob bets, a pimply sister and a philandering lodger make up Nicky’s immediate household but the plotless story takes in most other aspects of village life—gossip, nosey

neighbours, major scandals and minor feuds. Outside all this there is, of * e lar « e stor y o( Nick y’ s io tell me pretty maiden, pub lished by Hodder & Stoughton Ltd. 22/6.) The Little Cif y is th e 36th of Bar bara Goolden’s novels—and no pub lisher produces such a number with out adequate reason. It proves that there is a sufficient number of people who stiff appreciate novels based on sweetness-and-light and the Highest Moral Values—two commodities in which this author specialises, ithe little city. Heinemann. 20/-.)