Outstanding on its own, this story [Sole Survivor] is considerably enriched by the past explored in previous Plumb books. Characters with this much history and development gather their own momentum, creating, as they do so, a picture of the Human Race as circuit not progression. In this trilogy, Gee spans almost a century of New Zealand's history and touches on many a universal truth. Sole, as the title implies, is essentially a survivor, and the book, the Plumb story, ends on an optimistic if poignant note. Gee is surely one of the richest writers around. His strength, like Cleopatra's, is his infinite variety, and he, too, makes hungry where most he satisfies.

Grace Ingoldby, "Dark Doings," in New Statesman (© 1983 The Statesman & Nation Publishing Co. Ltd.), Vol. 106, No. 2745, October 28, 1983, p. 30.∗