The Daily Reporter – Jan 21, 1997 by Phillip Alder
Batsford has reprinted the first two books by Victor Mollo featuring his bridge playing animals. They are “Bridge In the Menagerie and ‘Bridge In the Fourth Dimension”. Not that I think it germinated the idea in Victor Mollo’s mind, but the star of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, is Napoleon, a pig, and the leading character in Victor Mollo’s menagerie stones is the Hideous Hog.
This deal is classic Mollo.
When North, the Rueful Rabbit passed over five spades, HH launched “on a vigorous speach in which he neither repeated himself nor stooped to use a single Parliamentary expression…
West, Papa the Greek, led the heart ace “to look at the table” rather than the more sensible trump. The Hog ruffed and cashed two top diamonds. When East discarded. H H paused, leaving unfinished a pithy sentence about craven cretinous curs.
Then he spread his hand with a cry of triumph. Clearly West had started with 7-1-5-0 shape. HH could cash five diamond tricks discarding a heart and two clubs from the dummy. Then a crossruff would bring in five more tricks for 11 at all, six spades and five hearts.
Now in magnanimous mood the Hog concluded: As I have always said, you were perfectly right to pass.