The Whispering Wall.(Review)

The Whispering Wall, by Patricia Carlon; Wakefield Crime Classics, 1992, $5.50.

ACCORDING TO an explanation at the end of this book, Peter Moss and Michael J. Tolley began collecting "forgotten or neglected gems of crime nd mystery fiction by Australian authors" in 1988. The result is seen in the Wakefield Crime Classics series, for which Moss and Tolley are the general editors, from Adelaide's far-seeing Wakefield Press.

The collection is stunningly presented with dramatically designed covers; the content is no less impressive. The others of the series that have crossed my path (Charlotte Jay's Beat Not the Bones and A Hank of Hair; Ligny's Lake by S.H. Courtier; The Secret of the Garden by Arthur Gask; Common People by A.E. Martin) are all visually attractive, and their narratives are still relevant and intriguing today. The series comprises a wide range of the sub-genres which could not fail to hold attraction for today's aficionados of crime fiction, since their plotting and writing have stood up to the evolution of crime literature as well as to the rapid change of the written and spoken language.

Patricia Carlon's plots were hatched primarily in the sixties. At the time, Australian publishers were only interested in police procedural mysteries, and Carlon's work, relying as it did on psychological suspense, was not accepted here. Overseas was a different matter. Carlon became well known in Europe, and when I was doing research for this review I discovered that translations of her various novels were being re-published in Europe. Others of her titles are The Souvenir, The Running Woman, The Price of an Orphan and Crime of Silence.

In The Whispering Wall Patricia Carlon has taken an all-too-common occurrence in our society, the striking down and paralysis of a vital and intelligent woman by a cerebral haemorrhage, and created a masterpiece of suspense. It is a shudderful tale of conditions that could conceivably await any one of us.

Sarah Oatland, who thinks of herself as "laid out like a fish on a slab", is confined to her room, paralysed in all her functions except, apparently, her swallowing reflex, since she is being fed orally rather than intravenously. She is cared for by a nurse, Bragg. Her attendant has a remarkable sensitivity to her patient's needs, despite Sarah's initial intense dislike of her. The nurse senses that her patient likes to be placed in a certain part of the room during the day, a preference she puts down to the view from the window. In fact, it is because sound travels through hollow spaces in the previously renovated wall, so that what is said in the downstairs room can be heard as whispers by Sarah in her strategically placed bed. Thus is Sarah able to keep abreast of her own progress, since her doctors do not like to discuss her condition in front of her--in case she can hear and understand, something not at ...