My wife has had many opportunities to notice my habit of ducking out of the room to avoid second hand embarrassment from TV. I can deal with tension, I have trouble with cringing. Lately I have noticed that I have had to pause reading when I am disturbed by weird things. Today I had to take a pause while re-reading a thriller I last read when I was probably in primary school, The Pulse of Danger, by Jon Cleary. Does anyone still read Jon Cleary? He had a great life as a writer, check him out on wikipedia. He travelled the world, lived overseas, retired to live on Sydney Harbour across from the Opera House, saw many of his books filmed. If you get a chance, have a look at the film “Scobie Malone” which seems to stream here and there now and then. It was based-ish on one of Cleary’s novels about Detective Malone. The film is ludicrous, and Cleary did not like it, but it is interesting to see Australian 70s celebrities and now famous but then young actors putting in over the top performances and delivering odd lines. Maybe just check it out for 15 minutes or so. Cleary also has one of my favourite writing quotes, from someone who made a very good living from it –

I realised at 40 I did not have the intellectual depth to be the writer I would like to be, so I determined to be as good a craftsman as I might be

I hate spoilers, but its not the ending, and the book is 60 years old. A small group of scientists have been high in the mountains of Bhutan collecting plants and insects, when the Sino-Indian war sneaks over the border and bangs right into them, in the form of an Indian officer who has captured a Chinese General (and secret plans he cannot read, because darn it, they are written in Chinese) and is on the run from Chinese soldiers. Off they all go. At one stage, they enter an empty monastery as they flee and find, tucked away, $40 million US Dollars, meant for Chiang Kai Shek and the KMT but dumped overboard by an American plane in distress. After a few rounds of, what fun will we have with all of this cash (and not one of them speaks of returning it, or ending world hunger), the scientists agree, the cash has to be burned so that it does not fall into the hands of the communists.

I had to walk away for a while. I could take stabbings and avalanches and shootings and a bunch of other stuff, but burning $40 million US Dollars – and remember, this was 60 years ago, when $40 million was a lot of money 🙂 – I needed to pause and collect myself at that prospect. Of course it is just paper, of course you cannot eat it, or ride it to safety, but … it is just wrong! I think I might need to take a good hard look at myself and get my priorities right … but $40 million … sheesh!

Deep breaths …