High Flyer

The story High Flyer is more an exciting adventure tale, than a religous story, as the Starbridge novels were. Howatch said that she had done a set of novels about the Church and its clergy, set in earlier days when "clergymen were gentlemen" and when the Church was a lot more formal. She hasn't been writing for many years. I imagine that she's in poor health. But she did indicate some time ago that having "done" novels on the church and the lives of the clergy, she did not want to revisit that field again. However, the novels tend to give a picture of people who are outside the Church.. and often hostile to Christianity, but they usually wind up revealing that being outside church life has led them to evil paths. So there seems to be an implication that Howatch thinks that being non religious may well mean that people end up not as commonplace ordinary people who are averagely selfish, but that they will get into serious trouble, morally speaking. She is realistic about people within the church and knows that they are often far from wonderful people. But when she turns to writing about non Christians, she seems to show them up as treading a dangerous path. In the second novel, High Flyer, we meet Carter Graham, a succesful corporate lawyer who lives in the City of London. She is making good money but she's not close to her working class family, who live in the North. She is called Catriona, but prefers to use a "masculine" name, Carter. Her father is a compulsive gambler. Her mother divorced him and remarried to give her daughter a secure home... but Carter isn't very grateful for this. She stays in touch with her parents but finds them hard going. She likes Ken, her mother's second husband, but thinks he is dull. She loves her father but feels bitter that he has disappointed her so many times. She meets a married man, Joachim (Kim) Betz, who was born in Germany, and who is also a successful lawyer. They have an affair, and Carter is eager to marry him. She has been thinking of getting married and having children as she is in her 30's now. Kim seems suitable for an ambitious and successful woman. He tells her his marriage was over, and that he is leaving his wife. They get married but Carter begins to worry about Kim. He was brought up by his mother and his English stepfather, but does not seem to feel much affection for either of them. She begins to realise that Kim has told her a lot of lies, and that there is a mystery in his life. She learns that he had sexual problems and went to a psychic healer, Mrs Mayfield for help. He took part in group sex and other weird quasi religious practices. But he tells her he regrets it now, yet is afraid that Mrs Mayfield won't let him go. Sophie, Kim's ex wife dies in an accidental fall at her house, but Carter worries that perhaps Kim killed her. She is beginning to think that he's capable of anything. She has become friendly with a young man who has worked as her PA in the office. He is called Eric Tucker and wants to be a writer. He works part time in offices to earn a living. He has a brother, Gilbert Tucker, who is a clergyman. After finding Sophie dead, she is terrified. She goes back to London and flees to the house of Eric's brother, Gilbert, the clergyman. Eric lives with his brother. She is desperate to speak to him. But when she explains that she saw something that might have been a ghost, Gilbert brings in Nick Darrow, who is an expert on the paranormal. She takes Eric back to her flat to seek for papers that might reveal Kim's secrets. Kim turns up with Mrs Mayfield, and in a confrontation, the younger man is stabbed. Kim has a mental collapse, and Carter, unable to face her own flat, stays in the Rectory to recover. She mulls over her past and why her life has turned out so badly. Kim has to be sent to a mental hospital, to recover. Carter refuses to visit him. However, when he is due to come out, she agrees to meet him. She offers to drive him home, and they go to the country town where Kim lived with his first wife. He traps Carter in the house. She has encouraged to tell her about his past. He tells her that he liked to sleep with men, and he had a fling with a man who was in the security business. He tells the story of how he was being blackmailed by this man, and he felt he had to kill the blackmailer. She realises that he has sexual feelings for men, and also he has anger issues with regard to men. She begins to understand that this is why he cares for her, because he thinks that she is more like a man than a woman, being hard and ambitious, but that she has a woman's body.... She fears that he may now decide that he has to kill her. Eric Tucker is in love with her, and worries about her meeting Kim. He follows her to the country house and is there to help her when she manages to escape. They hurr back to London. She guesses that Kim has gone back to their flat to get his passport. He is making a desperate dash to get out of England. The police catch up with him and to escape them, he jumps off the balcony of their high rise luxury flat. Mrs Mayfield disappears and the police cannot find her. Carter goes through a difficult period of trying to work out why she wound up in this world of occultism, weird sexual practices and general evil, and why she married such an awful man. She feels she can't trust Eric Tucker, though she cares for him. She realises that Kim on some level reminds her of her father, a compulsive gambler, who is in prison at present. Eventually she comes to a point of being able to forgive Kim and to at least trust Eric enough to go out with him. She has inherited a lot of money from Kim, and decides to become a volunteer for the centre....