Penguin no. 1548: Third Party Risk by Nicolas Bentley

If you know Greenstead, you'll know Waveney Avenue, because Greenstead is the kind of suburb in which one street is distinguishable from another only if you have to live there...In summer the gardens in Waveney Avenue are bright with standard roses as pink as peppermint rock. In winter, they're as empty as the little minds poring over the pools forecasts indoors...Beyond Princess Parade where the shops begin, there are the factories, light and bright and airy, like new hygienic jails. But the prisoners in them are not making mail bags. They're turning out toothpaste and tinned beans and cereals and deodorants and razor blades, so you'll have something to cut your wrists with when you can't stand life in Greenstead a moment longer.

Philip Geiger nearly drowns one morning while holidaying in a village near Marseille when he has a leg cramp during a morning swim. He is rescued and brought to safety by Tony Roscoe, a celebrity photographer holidaying at the same hotel, and someone Geiger soon realizes he does not particularly like, but to whom he feels indebted. To repay his obligation, he offers to drive Roscoe's car back to London when the latter has to suddenly fly home, agreeing to also bring an envelope which can't be retrieved from the hotel safe in time for the flight. But possession of Roscoe's car brings Geiger unwanted attention, and when he is beaten up and temporarily imprisoned by some French thugs he infers that Roscoe must have dealings on the wrong side of the law. The following week, when he attempts to deliver the envelope in London, he finds Roscoe's murdered body lying on the bathroom floor.

Geiger's first thought is for his own safety, though in a bizarre assessment of the risks he doesn't perceive the threat to be from Roscoe's murderer, or on account of the envelope in his possession. His main concern is for the possible ineptness of the police. Even though he barely knew the man, can have no motive for killing him, and the only link between them is the car, Geiger believes the police will fix upon him as the likely murderer. Inconceivably, he chooses to behave like a guilty man rather than an innocent one, and begins covering his tracks with the most transparent of lies, even though there is nothing incriminating to conceal other than his easily-explained presence in Roscoe's flat shortly after his death.

This dissembling is done to buy himself sufficient time to track down Roscoe's murderer, as he believes solving the crime himself will be his only protection against an incompetent police force and a gullible jury. He sets out with no knowledge of Roscoe or his dealings, and all the skills and experience of a man who writes film scripts for a living, and takes on blackmailers and murderers, unravelling a mystery which involves pornographic photos and stolen research.

In telling his story, Geiger acknowledges at the outset that he has behaved foolishly, but this admission doesn't really overcome the major flaw in this story, which is that it doesn't make sense. The entire plot is built upon a series of decisions by him which seem not just foolish, but also irrational, so that his tale becomes difficult to credit, and the story comes across as contrived. And as his account is given in the first person, it is not only his choices which seem inconceivable, but also his justifications. This is not the story of someone inadvertently thrust into a dangerous situation; instead, this is the story of a man who risks his life, and the lives of others, by making very poor decisions.

But if you can ignore the entirely improbable foundations on which the plot is constructed, and if you can abide with the hard-boiled style the writer seeks to emulate, what follows is an adequate thriller which culminates in a farcical chase scene through the French countryside.