GREENCOMBER

Forlornly trying his luck inland when driven from his beloved beach, the ""Greencomber"" of the title comes upon two children and a mentally crippled woman held prisoner by a mad scientist--a situation which Tare once explored to dazzling effect in short-story form. In this reworking and continuation of some of the same material, Greencomber rescues the three in the first flush of would-be-heroism, only to find himself and his charges pursued by inexplicable threats. The ensuing sorting-out of motives, responsibilities, and historical conundrums is beset with cloying pretensions and couched in the endlessly fiddlesome prose style familiar to readers of Moon on an Iron Meadow (1974) and Faces in the Flames (1976).