This terse, chilling tale is a quiet horror

story carrying a disturbing truth.

The Jardines are a typical, solid

middle-class family, living in the Lon-

don suburbS. They are looking forward

to a long-planned vacation in Spain.

But the morning before their departure

Mrs. Jardine finds in the kitchen the

body of a soldier. He is there from no-

where, he is dead, but he is bleeding.

Matter-of-factly the Jardines decide to

dispose of the body quickly but prop-

erly, and they set out in their car with

the bleeding, dead soldier, going to

the army, the church, the police. Christopher Leach describes their

nightmare trip with a spare, dead-pan

precision that makes it Sometimes

comic and always devastatingly effec-

tive. The climax of this short novel is

a shocker: it leaves the meaning of the

book to haunt the reader.

CHRISTOPHER LEACH. born in

London in 1925. is the author of four

novels and three books for children.

He is a painter as well, whose work has

been exhibited in London and Cairo;

and his poems have been published in

various periodicals.