Not for Maiden Aunts

THE WAGES OF FEAR (186 pp.) --Georges Arnaud -- Farrar, Sfraus & Young ($3).

At the Zulaco oil fields, a great plume of fire rises from Well No. 16. The drill tower rears and twists. Thirteen men are dead. The fire rages on. Company inspectors decide that the fire can be snuffed only with explosives. Back at the port of Las Piedras, 300 miles away, sit two tons of nitro-glycerin--but can they be hauled across the shambles of a road that leads to the oil fields?

The story of The Wages of Fear is the story of how two young European derelicts, the Frenchman Gerard and the Rumanian Johnny, ride the nitro in at high speed for $1,000 each.

Johnny breaks down, but Gerard refuses to turn back. They hit a dirt track pitted with deep holes which must be taken in first gear. Then comes a stretch of washboard to be crossed at 50 m.p.h. so that the truck will skim over the crests of the ridges. One of his shock-absorbers, Gerard discovers, has been sabotaged by another man who hoped to get the assignment. Farther on, Gerard and Johnny barely miss a collision with a truck carrying the other half of the nitro. In one village, both trucks are misled to a side road by a priest who fears they will explode in the town; the drivers beat the priest to the point of death.

The climax comes when the second truck explodes in a soaring white flash. Gerard, by sacrificing his partner, pushes on to Zulaco.

The book is marred by a patly ironic ending and occasional banalities of style.

But these faults are hardly worth carping about. The Wages of Fear is a first novel by Georges Arnaud, 34, a wartime refugee from France who made his way to Central America, worked as truck driver and gold prospector, and soaked himself in the life of the oil fields. His story marks Arnaud as one of those literary naturals who find their bent the first try. Brutal, violent and good storytelling, The Wages of Fear makes a lot of hard-boiled writers look like children writing for their maiden aunts.

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