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The mystery began in 1941. With Japanese forces sweeping into China, Peking Man was crated and sent to a U.S. Marine base near Chingwangtao for shipment to safekeeping in the U.S. Before the Marines were able to leave, the Japanese arrived. In the confusion, the bones were lost. Or were they stolen? Over the years only one informant, a woman who said she was the widow of one of the Marines, claimed to have the bones in her possession. In 1972 she agreed to meet Janus and Shapiro on the observation deck of the Empire State Building, produced a photograph of what looked like the bones and offered to sell them for $500,000. But she fled, when a tourist seemed to be taking her picture. Since then, no one has been able to locate her.
Wherever he is, Peking Man is an anthropological treasure. Study of his 500,000-year-old remains using new methods might resolve a current controversy about evolution. Until Peking Man was discovered, most researchers assumed that the human family tree first took root in Africa. The existence of such a highly evolved individual in China suggests that there is more than one tree.
MIRROR MIRROR
by HARRIET WAUGH 250 pages. Little, Brown. $7.95.
This very British novel is about a man whose face is his misfortune, by a woman whose name may be hers. Its protagonist, Godfrey Pettlement, is so hideous that children whimper and adults recoil in shock when they see him. Even horror-film producers find him too ugly to cast. "One doesn't think of you having a normal figure," somebody tells Pettlement. "It would be more in keeping if you somehow sploshed along the ground or were drawn by suction power."
Poor Godfrey struggles through years of rejection before a rich young man accepts him, much as a lepidopterist might collect a grotesque rare moth. When the young man dies, he leaves Godfrey enough money to go to Britain's best plastic surgeon. What emerges is a face of such beauty that it suggests a saintly soul. Far from it. With beauty comes vindictiveness. Godfrey is bent on revenge for being spurned so long. He becomes a famous preacher who cries out to vast audiences: "Christ died for man to atone for sin. Can we do less for him?" In response, 332 people crucify themselves, and Godfrey himself is brought up short by a novitiate who plays Judith to his Holofernes.
So catholic a taste in carryings-on suggests the author's father, Evelyn Waugh. Inevitably Daughter Harriet, a sometime editor and technician in the London planetarium who has now written a first novel at 31, suffers in comparison, not only with Father but with precocious Brother Auberon, 35, who turned out The Foxglove Saga 15 years ago. Evelyn satirized his peers and times by following sane characters through a giddy world. Harriet uses the much less engaging converse: crazy people, sane society. The father's unremittingly inhospitable view of humanity lent his books bite and pace. The daughter, so far at least, clearly shares his disdain for British foible, but cannot sustain it; when she lapses into tolerance, the novel drags. Even so, Mirror reflects a provocative and steely talent.
THE MONEYCHANGERS
by ARTHUR HAILEY 472 pages. Doubleday. $10.