First published 1972. Harper Collins, paperback, 2020, pp 312, c.85,000 words.
This is another ‘almost Bagley’. Along with Juggernaut and Night of Error, he didn’t publish this and it was only found in his document archive, held at the Boston University in the USA in 2017, by Philip Eastwood, a Bagley devotee. Along with a completed first draft, there were notes on planned amendments by both Bagley and his publisher, as well as correspondence between the two regarding a second draft. Despite having sold the rights to a Scandinavian publisher, the book was never revised, most likely it seems because other projects took priority. It may also have been because Bagley was never really happy with the basis for the book, which was originally meant to be a ‘who done it’, onto which Bagley wanted to add a thriller ending. In a letter to his publisher (included in this edition), he says that ‘who done it’ didn’t really suit his writing style which was to set up a situation and see where it led, whereas a ‘who done it’ required all the structure of the plot to be worked out prior to commencing writing. Bagley’s title for the first draft was Because Salton Died, which illustrates that he was more interested in the consequences following the death rather than the cause.
The Bagley first draft has been ‘curated’ by Michael Davis, a lifelong Bagley fan, and someone who followed Bagley’s path from journalism into book writing. He describes his work as ‘emendations’, but they are unlikely to have been considerable because the Bagley first draft was 89,000 words and this book must be about the same.
What we have is a fun, Bagley-type thriller. The protagonist is ex-Army and now an investigator-consultant for an insurance company. A client of the company dies in strange circumstances, and our hero is sent to investigate. The setting is a small, independent, Caribbean island that is both a tax-haven for financiers and a gambling resort for tourists. The locals are poor; the politics in turmoil. No-one wants someone digging up dirt. There are beautiful women and ragged women, honest cops and bad cops, good business people and bad business people, corrupt politicians and some who care. It is a fine mix and much fun is had. Perhaps the pace is a bit unrealistically frenetic, with our hero driving across the island in mad dashes, just squeezing out of scrapes, and putting things together that others have failed to do. But we don’t really need too much realism in a thriller; it’s all about pace, and that we have.
The last part, which presumably Bagley intended as his ‘thriller ending’, is certainly that. However, it came rather out of the blue and seemed rather detached from what came before. Perhaps there is an element of realism about that: one has to turn over a lot of stones to get at the real truth. There was also the question of which of the beautiful women our hero was going to end up with. Both were attractively drawn, both physically and in terms of personality. The second stepped aside rather easily in the end.
There are some fine characterisations of secondary characters, which Bagley is rather better at than many thriller writers. For example, the good policeman, Hanna, was particularly well drawn as a complex, and conflicted person. Similarly the dead man emerges as a real human, with virtues and flaws, and we are nicely led to question what he was really up to, and why he died, right close to the end.
© William John Graham, July 2022