Walking Dead

Quirky, imaginative Peter Dickinson can do - has done - far better than this: one of his restless adventures in which exotica swamps charm. The disappointment is especially keen because the beginning is so promising, with British animal-experiment expert David Foxe being posted to the dictator-ed Southward Islands in the Carib, where Dr. Foxe's technical problems with his latest rat maze overlap nicely with whispers of supernatural gatherings and native unrest. But soon the laboratory's cleaning lady is found dead, and innocent Foxe is arrested - the dictatorship's ploy to force him into conducting experiments on political prisoners. Here again interest is quickened by the mechanics and morality of experimentation, only to be frustrated when Foxe decides to lead the prisoners in an Alistair-MacLeanish escape involving human cockfights and black magic, A number of subsidiary characters - the dictator's primitive Mum, Foxe's paranoid boss, a "nutter" rodent named Quentin - confirm Dickinson's gift for full-color sketch portraits, and no novel with the line "would you be kind enough to shoot my rat?" could be called unrewarding. But Foxe's character transformation from "Walking Dead" to Living Rebel is unconvincing, and the everlimboing plot may twist and shake with Dickinsonian verve, but it never settles down long enough for real Dickinson satisfaction. (Kirkus Reviews)