AustLit

'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)