FOREWARD

The shot is from the front of a cruising car with Steve McQueen at the wheel; through the rear window we see another car ease menacingly over the crest of one of San Francisco's switchback hills. McQueen's baby blue eyes harden as he glances in the mirror, and what many would argue is the greatest car chase in cinema history has begun.

As I write, it's years since I've seen Bullitt, but that chase is burnt into my memory; it's probably burnt into yours as well. But. .. what else was there? Robert Vaughan as a smooth villain, Jacqueline Bisset was in there somewhere…

The good guys must have won, they always did in those days, but how accurately did the story follow Mute Witness? It certainly moved the action from New York to the West Coast. It doesn't matter; one was a classic cop movie, the original a fine American cop thriller.

Robert L. Pike concentrates everything into seventy-two hours, no flashbacks, no digressions, no blank time lapses. Clancy is not a superman, just a hard-working, conscientious police lieutenant under pressure. What he doesn't understand worries him. Why should Johnny Rossi suddenly want to turn state evidence? How do so many people know things they shouldn't? When was the washing line empty? (That running joke provides the neat touch that returns everything to normal at the end.)

You can believe in Clancy and the people he deals with. He misses things because he's tired, he makes errors of judgment, he gets frustrated and impatient. But he's a professional who never lets go. Behind what looks like nothing more than a simple witness protection operation is a murder plot, carefully and ruthlessly worked out, and Clancy has to crack it.

Pike (actually Robert L. Fish, who wrote the Schlock Holmes parodies) ingeniously combines the police procedural with elements of the classic mystery. Amid the action, all the clues are there if you can spot them, and Clancy's explanation at the end is as satisfying as a tough crossword clue when someone tells you the answer. It's good to see Mute Witness back in print.

Oh, and that car chase you remember from the film. How did it end? In a fireball at a gas station. People often forget that as well.

Robert Richardson

1994

Robert Richardson's first Augustus Maltravers mystery, The Latimer Mercy, won the Crime Writers' Association's 1985 John Creasey Award for the best debut crime novel. His books have been sold to America, Japan, Germany, Italy, Hungary and Russia, and he was chairman of the CWA from 1993 to 1994.