Some Holiday Fiction

HOWARD Spring’s books flow along like a sluggish stream through an English water-meadow; but as a change from literary psychiatry, four-letter words, sex rampant, violence, murder and super-spies, they have a tranquilising effect.

Winds of the Day, mercifully, has a new set of characters and the reader isn’t asked to grapple with all the septs and siblings of those who appeared in his Dunkerleys and Hard Facts and far too many of the novels that followed.

It is written in the first person, by Alice Openshaw and is largely a 50 years’ chunk out of Alice’s life.

As such, like all Howard Spring’s books, it has a multitude of charac ters who span several generations, some of whom flit into the pages and disappear, some, who become part of the permanent fabric of the book.

Alice was born at the end of the reign of Queen Victoria, in Man chester, and there, in her early teens, became a servant girl.

Unlike most people born in her circumstances Alice had a burning desire for book knowledge. Because of this and her red hair and her get up-and-go personality, Manchester did not hold her very long.

We follow her to Cardiff, to London, to Paris and—as is inevit able in most of this writer’s books — to Cornwall.

Apart from Alice, if this book has any central theme, it is the house, Dros-y-Mor, at the top of a tidal water in Cornwall. And if there is a moral, it is probably that all things are transitory, even the character and personality of people. (Published by Collins. 28/6.) MISS MARPLE, who has seemed lately to have been on the point of shuffling off this Mortal Coil from decrepitude, now turns up, suprisingly enough, at a tourist hotel in the West Indies, in the latest Agatha Christie A Caribbean Mystery.

She has been sent to St. Honore by her loving nephew, to recuperate from an English winter and there upon the usual happens—two people die mysteriously and Miss Marple takes a new lease of life, snooping round in the hibiscus bushes and finally exposing the villain.

Good holiday reading fun, in the best Agatha Christie manner. (Published by Collins. A Crime Club Choice. 22/6.)

Brink Of Disaster, By Guy

Cullingford, is a psychological thriller rather than a who-dun-it, with main plot and a lot of side issues. Robert Cave pushed his girl friend in a canal because she tried on the oldest trick in the world — then went home and told his mean minded spouse about it.

The “gaol” that she and her holier-than-thou aunt and uncle confined him in was a great deal more like hell than the real thing. (Geoffrey Bles. 19/-.)

Frime Writers’ Choice, By

the Crime Writers’ Association, is the fifth collection of stories by members of the Crime Writers’

Association. There are 13 stories in this anthology, written by Val Gielgud, Nigel Morland, Roy Vickers, Herbert Harris, Julian Symons, Berkeley Mather, Michael Gilbert, Josephine Bell, Maurice Procter, Anthony Gilbert, Guy Cullingford, Elizabeth Ferrars and Margery Allingham.

Roy Vickers has edited the book. (Hodder & Stoughton Ltd. 19/-.) A COLLECTION of 15 stories by Australian writers Summer’s Tales I— is planned as an annual event. Most of them were written especially for the collection although some have appeared in Australian publications; four were prize winners in a competition conducted by the Adelaide Advertiser.

A number of well-known names turn up amongst contributors —including Patsy Adam-Smith, Nancy Phelan and Keith Willey who wrote a Northern Territory tale while living in Port Moresby, and who is currently writing a book on P-NG.

Most of the stories are readable and most are on-beat instead of off.

The collection is edited by Kylie Tennant. (Macmillan, Melbourne. 25/-.)

J Ook Three Ways At

MURDER, by John Creasey, is an Inspector West number con cerning a wages hold-up and sub sequent murder.

The story is written from three angles—that of the hunters, that of the hunted and that of the victims— and rattles along at Creasey’s usual pace. (Hodder & Stoughton. 19/-.)