February 1961
Probability in a crime story or thriller need be no more effective than a hat holding water - in both cases a little time destroys the situation, but meanwhile you can be entertained or slaked. Mr. Bingham’s story is probably improbable, but quite probable enough for me to read right through it wanting to know how things will happen. For his villain is so pitch black - so uncompromisingly wicked and horrible that one can be in no doubt about his end. He is a blackmailer, a murderer, and sexually (if nothing else) unbalanced. He is mean, greedy, a bully, a sadist and a coward, and he has a nasty little voice. He has, in fact, none of the charm often attributed to wicked people - from the devil to Cecily Cardew’s Algernon - and one does wonder a bit how he manages to pass the time when he is not actually engaged in the activities outlined above. It is no chance, I feel, that he spends his holiday fishing, which involves the same kind of isolation and fleeting contact with his victims.
He is taking his ill-earned rest when the book starts, and does not know that he is being pursued by a journalist who has good personal reason to kill him. The reasons are then separately outlined from the point of view of the various victims, until, by the time we are back fishing with these two men, we are, so to speak, informed towards revenge. Mr Bingham is very good at his vignettes of people - one sees their lives stretching each side of the moments in which he presents them, and therefore, I should have liked a wider vision of his main character: but this would probable turn out to be a morbid request.