THE FOUR FACES

The author has a great deal to say to the West about the Far East when the twain meet. This time around, it might have been better for her to drop the fictional trappings and put her concern into blunt non-fiction. The Four Faces is melodrama and the characters close to stereotypical. They come together at a neutralist Congress of Writers being held in Cambodia and their conversation waxes and wanes with political and philosophical clashes and murmurs while the plot creaks with international intrigue. When not in Congress assembled, the writer's group pursues the activities best suited to: a hymphomaniac; a Buddhist monk; a fashion expert who loves to pose for photographs against the well described Cambodian scene; a photographer who specializes in ladies' pictures while dreaming of boys; and a bestselling Asian woman writer. This is only part of the scramble of characters that produce occasional flashes of quotable insult and engage in the desultory detection of a murderer when they would much rather talk. This is an author that sells in high figures who has slipped this time in construction, if not in conversation.