THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, May 30, 1996 TAG: 9605300047
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E3 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY RICKEY WRIGHT
LENGTH: 84 lines
JONATHAN BLAIR is sick, stricken with malaria and stuck in a country - England - that he despises. But the antihero of Martin Cruz Smith's new novel, ``Rose,'' has a mission to fulfill before he can escape.
Set in the late 19th century mining town of Wigan, ``Rose'' expands on the mystery/adventure that we have come to expect from Smith (``Gorky Park,'' ``Red Square''). Long before ``Rose'' ends, it reveals itself to be a romance, a feminist fable and a mystery on more than one level.
American Blair, an explorer whose African treks have made him a low-rent celebrity, is a character whom we've met before, under many names. Not unlike Philip Marlowe, Blair has fallen into disrepute and found he can live with it. At the mercy of the aging Bishop Hannay, who controls his expense-account purse strings, he arrives in Wigan to investigate the disappearance of a young cleric.
Having vanished on the same day that a mine explosion killed 76 men and boys, John Maypole at first is hardly missed. His diary informs us, however, that Maypole is having trouble reconciling his calling and his engagement to Hannay's daughter Charlotte with his growing obsession with the title character.
Rose Molyneux, a ``pit girl'' who spends her working day sorting coal above ground, is held in contempt by Charlotte and others in the upper class. As the deceptively intricate plot moves along, she will obviously prove a more moral, trustworthy character in spite of her scandalous occupation and wardrobe (frequently pants).
Smith might be setting such cliched story elements as a challenge to himself. But where many a potboiler might listlessly wind through the somewhat stock characters and situations, ``Rose'' triumphs as a funny and interesting work.
Smith juggles his myriad aims so well that the book keeps its crackling pace even when the focus has moved from the search, which is often. One of Smith's finer achievements here is balancing a large cast. He manages to put vivid faces on even the most minor characters.
Few readers will walk away from ``Rose'' feeling undernourished, and not just because of the surprises of the last 50 pages. Smith obviously has done his history and geography homework. And his writing is superb, like this: ``Charlotte's response to some riposte from Earnshaw was a basilisk stare that would have plunged a normal man into silence, but the member of parliament maintained a confident air of satisfaction. Which was why politicians were assassinated, Blair thought, because nothing else would faze them.''
Or this, about night on the working-class side of Wigan: ``The daytime sound was different because women and children were in the streets and the tin of their clogs on stone rang through the singsong of vendors and tinkers. Miners wore clogs, mill workers wore clogs, everyone in Scholes wore clogs. What had Rose Molyneux called Wigan? A black hole? It was a loud hole.''
The miners' trapped lives away from work, and the real potential of a live burial at work, provide some of the most cutting imagery. In a world of tunnels where air is a greater prize than coal, a heavily controlled environment keeps the men breathing.
The mean life of the underground is best portrayed by the pit manager who discharges a man for dereliction of duty after he leaves his post to retrieve his son's body; the man commits suicide a few days later. This harshness carries over to the miners' night life, full of alcohol and vicious human cockfights.
Blair himself is caught, sometimes literally, between a rock and a hard place. The search for Maypole proves to be an existential joke, a lark for Hannay and a means by which he hopes to steer Charlotte's course. Blair's involvement with Rose leads to bloody consequences that encourage him to wrap up the mystery, if just for his own peace of mind. As one character points out, the ``white man's graveyard'' is Wigan, not West Africa.
With all this machismo on display, it would be easy for Smith to cut corners on his female characters. He doesn't. Rose and Charlotte are both rendered fully formed.
For all his perceived failings - and his almost comical propensity for becoming the brunt of serious violence - Blair is a prototypical tough-but-tender guy. No matter how hapless his position, the man sticks to his task and wins the day. Antihero? Sure. But the second half of the word is, after all, hero. ILLUSTRATION: Graphic
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BOOK REVIEW
``Rose''
Author: Martin Cruz Smith
Publisher: Random House. 364 pp.
Price: $25 by CNB