DANGER UNDER THE MOON

Maybe Maurice Walsh is a special taste, but I confess to loving every line he writes. Sometimes my better judgment registers a book- or a story- as below par. But this time he has measured up to his high water mark of The Road to Nowhere and The Small Dark Man. Once again there's the lilt and whimsy of the Irish, the zest for adventure, the aura of mystery, the old fashioned loyalties and devotions. Once again there is the feel of the countryside, intensified this time by the fact that the hero is but lately returned from serving a nine year jail sentence, for a crime only he and one other know he did not commit. That the two loved each other, and suspected each the other, cluttered the foreground and made difficult the identification of the actual criminal. But it isn't plotting, it's how he tells it that gives it the special charm that is Maurice Walsh. It is a tale of derring do in the old Jeffrey Farnol manner. The Irish countryside this time (his Trouble in the Glen was set in the Highlands of Scotland) is more to his liking one feels. And the spinning of a yarn that is eminently readable offsets what some may feel is a Gaelic sentimentality. Anyhow I- and many another I think- find it has an evasive lure.