Tight Little Murder

I'm sure that a posteriori reasoning doesn't hold in cases like this, but nevertheless I'd be willing to bet a bundle that Admiral Gene Markey USNR (Ret.) ran a taut ship. For sure, he tells a taut story. The Little Emerald is as neat, as tight a piece of work as you could want. Nothing wasted, no loose ends, no preposterous plot manipulations. Just a damn fine whodunit.

The story goes swiftly, surely, according to its own givens. Jack McGlory, newspaper publisher, returns to New Caledonia (the Little Emerald) to revisit the scene of his World War II service as a Marine. Before he can even get off his plane the first murder (number one of four) is committed as McGlory's seat-mate is given a lethal Mickey. Whodunit? McGlory, of course, say the French police, and so he must turn detective if for no other reason than to clear himself.

The required supporting cast and props are set quickly, deftly into place: a mysterious coded map found on corpse number one; a homocidal character with a limp; an Americanophobic police sergeant; a nubile Polynesian airline hostess whose gratitude to McGlory knows no bounds (you can see from the start whose bed she will end up in - and she does). True to the traditions of his genre, Markey is not above dragging a few red herrings across your path. He keeps you on your toes. But he also plays fair, all the way.

The whole thing goes very much like a movie, one of Alfred Hitchcock's, say. It's pared right down to the essentials, short scenes one after another like a string of exploding firecrackers, each one propelling the plot just a little further along. And of course, dialogue; the story is told almost completely in dialogue. There, surely, Markey excels. He can give you more essential information about a character's motivations in five lines of dialogue than most writers can convey in a full page of third-person narrative. No doubt Markey's skill with dialogue can be attributed to his long association with motion pictures. During his Hollywood career, after all, he directed 19 of them. But of course there's that a posteriori reasoning getting in the way again.

The climax comes after a round-the-island chase, as McGlory, coded map in hand, gathers the clues which bring him inexorably to a coral lagoon where ... But hold, enough!

This one you must read for yourself. And don't be surprised if you hear about a movie version of it before long either. It's ready-made.

THE LITTLE EMERALDBy Gene Mar key '18Seeman, 1978. 176 pp. $5.00