BOOKS

A REAL SLEEPER

A WICKED PACK OF CARDS, by Hugh Ross Williamson. London: Michael Joseph. 1961. 205 pp. $3.75. Reviewed by Noel I. Garde.

"A real sleeper" you would call it if it were a movie. It's a most extraordinary sort of little book, in a class all by itself. And a real gem, in this reviewer's opinion. How do you classify' it? Well, first of all it's a murder mystery. But hardly the usual sort, since the murder victim, the murderer and the detective are all homosexuals, and each other's lovers at one time or another. And then, aside from being a suspenseful murder mystery, and a homosexual novel, it also contains a heavy dose of metaphysical and philosophical speculation respectively on the symbolism of tarot cards (the type used by gypsy fortune-tellers, whence the title) and on the different approaches to love.

The story is told as a first-person narrative by a 27-year old school-teacher named Adrian Musgrave. While motoring in moor country during his vacation, he is attracted by an inn-sign of the Four Kings, representing the heads of four Tarot kings, except that each head is obviously an individual portrait, and the artist extremely talented. Deciding to satisfy his curiosity, he enters the inn and is given a friendly greeting by a good-looking 20-year old youth named Brian who informs him that the talented painter of the sign had just recently been found dead on the moors, at the bottom of a steep drop, the victim of "death by misadventure" according to the coroner. Adrian gets further information about the 18-year old painter from the owner of the inn, a very attractive woman named Eve Smith, a former actress. She is a great devotee of tarot cards, had inspired the young man, a frequent visitor, to make an inn-sign for her along those lines, and as a result of her reading of the cards, has doubts about the death being accidental. Adrian is persuaded to look into the backgroung of the dead boy, John Adam, and from

Eve receives some clues.

Having been furnished with four names, Adrian tracks down the four men in and out of London. It is soon obvious that each of them is the model for one of the four heads on the inn-sign. Symbolically representing functions of tarot kings, one is a wheeler-dealer financier, another a politician, another a clergyman and a fourth a journalist. The thing they all have in common is indeed a startling one! And possibly one of them is John's murderer! mattachine REVIEW

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John, it seems, was brought up as an orphan at a good school, and after a short stay with foster parents, took to living, since the age of 16, with a schoolmaster referred to only as A. Since getting out of school, painting and sketching has been the only occupation of his generally bohemian and vagabond life, as far as Adrian can learn. Of course, Adrian doesn't hear too much about John's relations with his schoolmaster friend.

In the course of visits back to the inn, Adrian becomes yet more friendly with young Brian and receives from him a page from John's diary which re¡eveals that John had left his schoolmaster friend because the latter had dis dained to try to hold him if he wanted to go. John's view, as revealed in his diary, is that if A. really loved him, he'd have said he'd kill John rather than let him go. But it is also clear that John had decided to go back to A.. The mystery is brought to its startling climax when Brian and Adrian take

a day off to visit the spot where John is buried, and also where he had his fatal fall. The conversation is centered very much on John, and it is soon clear that Brian had been John's lover during his stay at the inn and was horrified at the thought of John leaving.

From here on out the story unravels itself with many surprises. Incidentally, not once in the course of this extraordinary book is there a reference to homosexuality as a concept, directly or indirectly.

A DASH OF REALITY

FIRE AND THE NIGHT, by Philip Jose Farmer. Regency Books, 1962. Reviewed by Gene Damon.

Philip Jose Farmer is one of those semi-famous, semi-ignored writers who frequently comment on situations un palatable to the many, and caviar to the few.

This novel is primarily a diatribe on race relations, The homosexual theme is muted-there are steaming touches of sexual tension between the three main characters, Danny, Vashti, and Virgil.

Danny, the white boy, is never fully revealed as a person. He is rather, somewhat like the mad narrator of Djuna Barnes' Nightwood. Vashti, the Negro woman, is a magnificent character, half stereotype and half real, but a very compelling combination. Virgil, the repressed homosexual husband of Vashti, is in some ways more believable than the other two. The emotions he feels for Danny are clearly homosexual, but this is not blatantly emphasized.

Partly because of the unusual side of the theme, this is a must book for the serious collector of male homosexual fiction. It is also an excellent novel and should appeal to even the casual reader, At least to the reader who can take his story with a dash of reality.

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