GEORGE R. STEWART’S COMMITTEE OF VIGILANCE (Houghton Mifflin, $5.00) tells how, in 1851, the sober citizens of San Francisco resorted to something closely resembling lynch law. The city was suffering from an incompetent administration and a large population of thieves, and the local merchants, exasperated equally with the criminals and with the authorities, formed a committee which took over the functions of both police and courts. Having hanged a few burglars and scared the police into a brief fit of gumption, the committee returned to normal business. The affair is notable for the decorum with which illegal justice was undertaken and the restraint with which it was exercised, but for these very reasons, the story is not exciting. Mr. Stewart has worked hard, digging through old records and dusty newspaper files, but his material is recalcitrant. It refuses to look like anything but a worthy moral example.
Depending on the inclination of the reader, RICHARD E. KIM’S novel, THE MARTYRED (Braziller, $4.50), can be taken as a study of Christian ethics, pastoral responsibility, the nature of truth, and several other matters. It is an interesting study from any point of view, a tense, undecorated account of a peculiar minor episode in the Korean War. Practically speaking, the shooting of some clergymen by an addled Communist officer is no more important than any other piece of military brutality, but by the exercise of intelligence and concern. Mr. Kim makes it a question of great importance, extending well beyond the military realm.
ALFRED DUGGAN’S novels prove him to be most learned in history, and his decision to write a short account of the Crusades is, in theory, reasonable. In fact, two hundred years of disorganized fighting across the whole Middle East is too much for any one book to cover, and Mr. Duggan’s normally elegant style is clogged by an unmanageable glut of facts. THE STORY OF THE CRUSADES (Pantheon, $4.95) does nothing | much for the author or the Crusades, but readers unfamiliar with the subject will not be led astray by it.
TEMPLES, TOMBS AND HIEROGLYPHS (Coward-McCann, $6.95), by BARBARA MERTZ, is another book for the uninformed — those ignorant of Egyptology. It is a delightful introduction to the field, for Dr. Mertz is an amusing writer with an eye for comedy, past or present. Constantly reminding the reader how much Egyptian history is necessarily half guesswork, she writes of forgotten pharaohs and their courts as though all these people lived and fought and intrigued only last week, and without being pedantic, she explains such things as Egyptian writing and archaeological methods clearly and tersely.
THE RAYMOND CHANDLER OMNIBUS (Knopf, $5.95) contains four of Chandler’s best mystery stories — The Big Sleep, Farewell, My Lovely, The High Window, and The Lady in the Lake. Phis is information enough for Chandler devotees. I would recommend the book to followers of James Bond, but I fear Marlowe’s wit would be too subtle for them.
About once a year, somebody writes another book trying to prove that the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl really represented folk memories of a visit by some white, bewhiskered European voyager. The latest of these volumes is IN QUEST OF THE WHITE GOD (Putnam, $5.95), by PIERRE HONORÉ, described by his publishers as “an internationally known scientist and diplomat.” Mr. Honoré’s book is enthusiastic, well illustrated, badly organized, and somewhat erratic with facts and references. Of the cross-city highway at Teotihuacan, the author reports, “The road was referred to as the ‘Via Sacra’ or ‘Way of Death,’ ” but by whom and when is never mentioned, leaving this information irrelevant as well as inconsistent. The book is nevertheless a beguiling thing; the author, floundering in his morass of parallels, myths, rumors, and assumptions, is so unconscious of the picture he is creating of Latin America as a prehistoric Grand Central Station, continually tramped through by Melanesians, Chinese, Phoenecians, and Cretans, that the project arouses sympathy as well as amusement. Austerely ignoring Vikings and Irish monks, Mr. Honore casts his vote for early Cretans, and his climactic piece of evidence is an innovation.