Book Review: The Quality of Mercy

Book Review: 'The Quality of Mercy' by D. G. Compton

3 / 5 Stars

'The Quality of Mercy' first was published in the U.K. in 1965. This Ace Books edition (191 pp.) was published in the U.S. in 1970 (the cover artist is uncredited).

The only other novel by Compton that I have read is 'The Silent Multitude', to which I gave a 1 Star score because of its thin plotting and overwritten prose. I was hoping for better things from 'Quality'.

'Quality' is set in 1979, at which time the Cold War still is being waged. Tensions are amplified by a crisis of overpopulation, which sees the UK housing large numbers of Third-World migrants. Making things worse is the advent of a strange new epidemic, 'Van der Plank's Disease', or V.P.D., involving a form of acute leukemia. V.P.D. has a sudden onset and no cure, and the residents of the U.K., and indeed every country in the world, have had to adopt a fatalistic attitude in the face of the disease's toll.

The lead character is a young Englishman, Captain Douglas Morrison, who resides with his wife Maria on the well-appointed grounds of an U.S. Air Force Strategic Air Command base near Oxford. Morrison is a navigator on an American PP9 model reconnaissance aircraft, one of many tasked with making clandestine, night-time overflights of the Eastern Bloc. The aircraft's flights are unusual, centered as they are on carefully dispersing radioactive particles over large sectors of the higher atmosphere.

Morrison is an earnest man, dedicated to his mission and dismissive of the peace movement burgeoning in the U.K. Morrison also isn't very bright, and resists efforts by his friend and colleague, the Squadron Leader, to question the wisdom of the actions of  the Air Command. But as events unfold, and the truth about the Command's mission emerges, Morrison will find that supporting the military means accepting a disturbing new reality for the human race. 

I found 'Quality' to be a better novel than 'The Silent Multitude'. Like many British sci-fi novels it has a subdued quality. Major incidents are not directly related to the reader, but are alluded to in the many conversational exchanges that occupy the narrative. There are quasi-lyrical passages describing the placidity of the English countryside on Summer evenings. Much of the narrative is occupied with documenting the interactions of Donald Morrison and his wife, both as a couple, and as part of the social order of the base (at one point, a shopping trip to the Post Exchange takes up nearly five pages of text). 'Quality' is at heart a domestic melodrama, with a thin science fiction coating. 

It is understood that by focusing his attention on the quotidian and the banal, author Compton is messaging about the ability of people to disregard the most menacing of catastrophes if it can be kept at arm's length. Compton also messages that the perpetrators of said catastrophe are not monsters, but 'ordinary' people who are willing to abandon their moral qualms to accommodate the demands of the Organization Man.

The denouement, which doesn't arrive until page 170, is more than a little contrived. I won't disclose any spoilers, but I finished the book with the feeling that Compton had equipped his novel with a provocative premise, but had failed to exploit this premise in as impactful a fashion as said premise would seem to command. 

Summing up, 'The Quality of Mercy' is a readable novel in the reserved tradition of British sci-fi. If you find such a style engaging, then you will want a copy in your book collection.