The Poison Chasers
Comments:
"Readily would we call this jaunty tale Crime Book of the Year if it wasn't so far such an excellent year...it's the telling that's the real razzmatazz, that and the cocky, witty,dialogue."
London Times Literary Supplement
Published:
1971 London, Hutchinson
1971 London, Hodder & Stoughton
1971 London, The Thriller Book Club. Reprinted 1972
There's this pollution research centre in remotest Scotland. Nothing way out about that, it seems to John Carlyle, who is there in charge of a construction gang. Just a straightforward routine construction job.
Routing? Well, maybe the corpses in the loch are a little out of the ordinary. Straightforward? Not quite, when it comes to sheep dropping dead in their tracks. Gassed, apparently.
And then, if it's just a non-secret establishment, why do security guards chase innocent citizens (like salmon poachers) with savage security dogs? And why, when they catch Bill Greig, a deserving poacher if ever there was one, do they say he has escaped when he hasn't, and get vicious when he does?
In trying to answer these questions, Carlyle and his wise-cracking, dry humoured Welsh foreman bulldoze their way to the heart of the pollution business. For good measure, and with his usual generosity, Henry Calvin throws in a stuffy Civil Servant, the nymphomaniac owner of a local crafts shop, and the CIA to make up what is his most entertaining, mystifying, and fast-moving suspense story so far.
Copyright 2025 The Estate of Clifford Hanley