CLASSIC CRIME

BARRY TURNER

DEEP WATER by Patricia Highsmith

(Virago £9.99) a ModEL citizen of a model town, Vic Van allen has an independent income, is outwardly sociable and easy-going.

He even tolerates his wife’s love affairs, though a hint of jealousy creeps through when he smilingly claims to have killed one of his former rivals.

When this proves untrue, Vic feels free to turn fiction into fact by disposing of the latest sexual predator.

assuming his innocence, his friends rally round, though some — including his wife — are certain of his guilt.

Highsmith has two great qualities as a crime writer: the tension she builds up is so strong as to tempt us to skip pages to find out what happens next; and she has a genius for portraying damaged characters who defy moral convention by eliciting our sympathy.

Vic is a murderer, but we side with him as he faces the sanctimonious hypocrites who seek his destruction.

This is literature of the highest order.

MYSTERY AT OLYMPIA by John Rhode

(Collins Crime Club £8.99) THis is an oldfashioned thriller and none the worse for that.

rhode was at his peak in the Thirties and Forties when he was praised for unravelling ingenious crimes set in sleepy suburbia.

in this, a prosperous but peevish businessman drops dead at the annual motor show. The post-mortem examination reveals traces of arsenic — yet the poison is not strong enough to have killed him. superintendent Hanslet is convinced that the victim has been murdered but struggles to prove foul play against the family members who stand to gain by his untimely death.

While Hanslet does all the legwork, the investigative brain is that of a taciturn genius, dr Lancelot Priestley. He remains placidly in the background until the moment comes to stagger the police and the reader with a solution to a deliciously convoluted plot.