High Flyer

The story is more an exciting adventure than a religous story, as the Starbridge novels were. Howatch said some time ago 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 and I imagine that she's in poor health, but she did indicate some time ago that having "Done" novels on the church and 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 she has a tendency to over write and to show up non Christians or anti Christians 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. Her father is a compulsive gambler and her mother has remarried to get away from him and 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 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 as he seems so suitable for an ambitious and successful woman. He tells her his marriage was a mistake and that he is leaving his wife. They get married but Carter has worries 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 and took part in group sex and other weird practices. But he regrets it now, yet is afraid that Mrs Mayfield wont let him go. Sophie, Kim's ex wife dies in an accident but Carter worries that perhaps Kim killed her. 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, but he works part time in offices to earn a living. She finds that he has a brother 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. When she explains that she thought she saw 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 and in a confrontation with Kim, the younger man is stabbed. Kim has a collapse, and Carter, unable to face her own flat, stays in the Rectory to recover and mulls over her past and why her life has turned out so badly. Kim breaks down completely and is 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, but he traps her in his 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. When he comes out with the story of how he was being blackmailed, and he felt he had to kill the blackmailer, she realises that he may now decide that he has to kill her to stop her going to the police. Eric Tucker is in love with her, and worries about her meeting Kim. He follows her to the country house and helps her to escape. She gets back to London to find that Kim has gone back to their flat to get his passport so he can leave the country, but 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....