Best of the Paperbacks

General:

The Log From The Sea Of

Cortez And The Short Reign

OF PIPPIN IV, both by John Steinbeck. The first gives a profile sketch of Ed Ricketts, the fabulous Doc of Cannery Row and Sweet Thursday who was killed in a car accident in 1948; followed by an ac count of a fishing trip the doctor and Steinbeck took in “Sea of Cortez” in the Gulf of California. The second Steinbeck is a short satirical novel of French politics as they were pre-de Gaulle. It concerns a little Frenchman who finds himself pushed into kingship when he preferred amateur astronomy; and is full of zany Steinbeck characters—a nun who had been in the Folies Bergere and a daughter who had written a best selling novel at 15. (Pan; 6/and 4/-.) HIPPODILE, by Ronald Leavis, is a modern African novel although which part of Africa it is very difficult to find out. Southern Rhodesia seems to fit the bill.

Although, as the title indicates (it is a portmanteau word invented to show the impossible offspring of a hippopotamus and a crocodile), it strives to show the difficulty of real contact between European and African, it is not primarily a book about race relations. Steve Hynde is a commercial traveller, his territory the Central African veldt, where he spends five days of the week with African and European customers and two in town with another man’s wife.

A beautiful, educated African girl brings complications, but perhaps the best part of the novel is in its descriptions of the veldt and its wild life. (Pan; 6/-.)

The Passion Flower

HOTEL, by Rosaline Erskine. Saucy, funny, immoral and enjoyable, A sort of St. Trinians with sex. (Pan; 4/-0

The Sins Of Philip Flem

ING, by Irving Wallace, who wrote The Chapman Report. About a man who married young and was faithful to his wife, but bored, until . . . (Pan; 6/-.)

The Sling And The Arrow,

by Stuart Engstrand, is strictly for those who like novels about sex

aberrations and psychiatrists. Re viewers have called it “strong and adult”. (Pan; 8/-.)

Faro’S Daughter, By

Georgette Heyer. Regency romance originally published 1941. (Pan; 6/-.)

Angelique In Revolt, By

Sergeanne Colon. This is Angelique mark IV, in which she continues her on-again, off-again romance with Louis XIV. She has thrown in her lot with the Huguenots (which annoys Louis), and becomes the most hunted woman in France. (Pan; 9/-.) THE PAWNBROKER, by Edward Lewis Wallant, has been made into a film and is based on America’s favourite theme —mental suffering.

The pawnbroker’s clients are Harlem’s dregs but he is less con cerned with these than his memory of Auschwitz. (Pan; 6/-.)

Fanny And The Regent Of

SIAM, by R. J. Minney, is a sequel to Anna and the King of Siam. After the King died and Anna returned tc the USA, Fanny Knox, daughter ol the British Consul-General, fell in love with a Siamese nobleman, to everyone’s displeasure. (Pan; 9/-.) Adventure And Thriller:

Covenant With Death, By

John Harris, is a World War I stor> of one British battalion from the time it was raised, in response to the beckoning Kitchener poster oi 1914, until it went over the top in Flanders in 1916 and was almost wiped out in a matter of minutes. (Pan; 8/-.) Fact; I WAS CICERO, by Elyesa Bazna in collaboration with Hans Nogly Cicero, code name for Bazna, was the most publicised spy of World War 11.

While he was valet to the British Am bassador in Ankara, Sir Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen, he obtained vitally important Allied war secrets, including decisions made at the Casa

blanca and Moscow conferences, and sold them to Sir Hughe’s German opposite-number, Franz von Papen.

TTie Germans cheated Cicero and paid him in forged British notes— £3oo,ooo is supposed to be the sum— and this is why, in 1962, he came out of hiding to tell his story to a writer of Munich and, for the first time, to reveal his real identity. He wanted the money from his life-story to sue the German Government for the money the Reich cheated him of. (Pan; 6/-.)

The Treasures Of Time Is

a collection of first-hand accounts of archaeological discoveries, edited by Leo Deuel, Lecturer in History at New York City College. Giovanni Belzoni tells how he explored the Valley of the Kings on the Upper Nile; Howard Carter how he found ;he Tomb of Tutankhamen; Profes sor Millar Burrows, who was director )f the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem, of the dis :overy of the Dead Sea Scrolls; and )ther famous archaeologists rake over Egypt, Mesopotamia, Syria, Palestine, Erete and Greece. As interesting as he accounts themselves are the intro luctions to each that Leo Deuel has :ontributed. (Pan; 8/-,) LIVING FREE, by Joy Adamson, fhe second of several books dealing vith Elsa, the Kenya lioness adopted md tamed by the Adamsons. In this >ook Elsa mates with a wild lion and •reduces three cubs. (Fontana.)

How To Retire Success

FULLY, by Carlton Wallace. This look is written for English conditions •ut has some sensible advice for nyone contemplating this sometimes mhappy state of affairs. It covers verything, from profitable hobbies 3 the information that Bournemouth nd Falmouth are relaxing and there ore good for high-blood pressure nd neurasthenia; while Eastbourne nd Hastings are bracing and there ore good for asthma and catarrh.

Pan; 6/-.) Westerns:

Silver Buckshot Is By W. C.

uttle upon whom the mantle of -larence E. Mulford of an earlier Western generation seems to have alien. (Fontana.) THE FUGITIVE RAIL by Zane Grey seems to prove lat old Westerns don’t die either Hodder); and THE FEUD, by madia Bean, is called a novel of ae Old West but has all the usual •immings. It is said to have been ased on real events. (Pan.) (Pan and Fontana books from William allins (Overseas) Ltd., Sydney; Hodder )oks from Hodder and Stoughton Ltd., rdney.)