Malice Aforethought

THE PURSUER--Louis Golding--Farrar & Rinehart ($2).

Of many existing causes for alarm, one minor one has been Author Louis Golding's caracoling cleverness, which has frightened away more than a few cautious readers. His latest tale is frightening for a different and better reason: it intends to be. A psychological horror story, The Pursuer gives hunters of goose flesh and duck bumps some satisfactorily thrilling moments.

Wace and Sharpies were schoolmates in the same English town, and rivals from the day they met. More, they were obsessed by their hatred of each other. But they rarely met. practically never spoke. Their paths parted briefly when Sharpies went up to Oxford and Wace into business. Sharpies turned up again just in time to steal Wace's sweetheart from under his nose, not for love of her but hate of him. That finished Wace's happiness: he took to drink, married a grateful prostitute. In middle age, both separated from their wives and each with a grown-up child, the enemies were settled in London. Sharpies began to dog Wace's trail again, went out of his way to shadow him, wrote him letters. . . . Gradually Wace became convinced that Sharpies' hounding was a deliberate incitement to murder. He fought against it as long as he could, eventually let himself be incited.

The deed done, he fled from England with his daughter--south to Marseille, to Africa, to the Italian islands, to Berlin. He doubled and twisted cunningly to shake off the dreaded pursuer, but his hope dwindled. One night he gave himself away by getting drunk and writing a letter to his enemy, addressing it to Hell but in care of the proper London business address. After that it was only a matter of time before the pursuer found his hiding place. At last Wace went to earth in Berlin, smuggled himself into his daughter's apartment and decided never to go out. Even there Sharpies' avenging son found him.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.