THE LONG MEMORY

A thriller, which extends its reach from a surface story of crime and punishment to a consideration of abstract justice, both human and legal, and which is brought to a finite conclusion through a temporizing treatment of the facts of the case. For Philip Davidson, who had served 17 years out of a 20 year sentence for a murder he did not commit, emerges from prison obsessed by a desire for revenge- against the two who had borne witness against him. While Lowther, a policeman, who had married one of the witnesses- the girl who had been Davidson's, knows only a sense of conscience to see an old wrong righted- even at the expense of his wife and child. In the days and nights of watching and waiting, for Davidson to kill- and Fay to confess, Lowther never falters in the principled course which may entail personal ruin, while Davidson, as he confronts his enemy, finds a release from the hangover of hate without violence....Gravesend, England, and the wasteland waterfront lends a shadowed montage to the narrative which is handled with a clean provision. Double market.