AustLit

'The story of group of young people who love the theatre, this is a book of the stage, with the familiar background and character of Carcoola Downs–and a young flying doctor.'

Source:

Advertisement, Canberra Times, 4 January 1957, p.4.

'On the last plane out of Communist-besieged Tao-ling, Lisa, and Austrian ex-patriot, meets two men: Marcus, whom she marries, and Richard, who cannot forget her.

The story of Lisa's love for both her husband and for her lover and of the conflicts which prevent her from abandoning a derelict marriage is told with sympathetic warmth.

The plot, tightly knit, moves fast against a backdrop of vivid beauty - that sparkling strip of wooden hill lying between the Pacific ocean and the calm waters of Broken Bay.

Equal in significance, however, is the characterisation which brings the story to life; Richard's mother, vital, indomitable, obtuse; Ernest, who asks only for affection; Cassandra, who has known love and cannot accept a substitute; and lastly and most penetratingly, Mrs. Moult, the Dutch refugee, insecure, frightened, warped.

Coward's Kiss is a novel of today. It mirrors the complexities of a changing world with its shifting standards and nebulous values. It is a story in which most readers will see something of themselves.' (Publisher's blurb)

'In this gripping story of present-day Malaya, the first novel drawn from the conflict in the Peninsula, action, lust and topicality pack the pages, which tell of the tough, bitter struggle between the rubber planters and the Communist guerrillas. It is the story of men who live with danger twenty-four hours of the day; of women who, separated from their husbands, uncertain of the future, live dangerously in the hotels of sophisticated Singapore; of the Malays, a simple, happy people torn between their feeling of oneness with the age-old neighbours, the Malayan Chinese, and their loyalty to the white Tuans, who provide them with a livelihood and deal justly with them.

'It is the story of one man's love for the Malayan girl who becomes his mistress and whose childlike gaiety and simple devotion offer him the only refuge from a nightmare existence.

'In moving contrast with this is his neighbour, Bellew, frantic with misery when his child is murdered on the plantation, tormented by rumours of his wife's infidelities, who dedicates himself to a vengeance which ultimately destroys him.

'Above all, Blood on the Leaves is the picture sharp, poignant and clear cut, of the oft repeated pattern of Communist rapacity as it spreads its red fungus of hate and terrorism, and of the efforts of Western civilisation, awakening, perhaps too late, to stem it.

'Blood on the Leaves is not for the squeamish, but it is a book which will be read.' (Publisher's blurb)