OF THE NIGHT
By
In this, his ninth novel, Jon Cleary has left Australia for Burma in another reasonably well-paced adventure with spiritual overtones which do not quite come off. David Breton is a fashionable London plastic surgeon, whose operating theatre techniques are as successful as his amatory exploits... But after a discomfiting suit for professional negligence, he is persuaded to go and see his father from whom he is estranged and who is now in Burma, dying of cancer. He finds him quite changed through the influence of an extraordinary Catholic missionary priest. And by sheer force of personality, Father Carady has a considerable impress on Breton as well, involves him in a hunt for a man-eating tiger and in the pursuit of a local bandit who heads an intimidating ragged rebel force. These experiences have their regenerative impact, presumably more lasting than the novel which is no more than an entertainment.