SUMMER PENGUINS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 1, Issue 14, 29 September 1939, Page 38

SUMMER PENGUINS

THE VERDICT OF YOU ALL, By Henry Wade. 246 pp. DEATH AT THE OPERA. By Gladys Mitchell. 246 pp. MISSING FROM HIS HOME, By Richard Keverne. 309 pp. AN OXFORD TRAGEDY. By Jj. C. Masterman. 213 pp. POLICE AT THE FUNERAL, By Margery Allingham. 277 pp. Penguin Books Limited (Allen Lane). Harmondsworth Thanks be to the Merchant Marine. " Boomps-a-Daisy!" arrived safely last week, not long after the July release of

Penguin Books. Cheaply produced as they are, the Penguins will remain with us longer than the song. Penguin Books Limited have the uncanny knack of printing the right books for the right people. The five latest additions to the "‘ Mystery and Crime" section are as fit for the idle hour on the train or at rest, as they will afterwards deserve putting out to pasture on some convenient shelf, Henry Wade, huntin’ shootin’ fishin’ baronet (full title: Major Sir Henry Aubrey Fletcher, D.S.O., M.V.O.), studies tle case of one who seems to be A.S. (above suspicion). But was the jury right? Why did the financier die? Margery Allingham writes a cunning mystery, as usual, This is one to keep the most virtuous awake. The next is more like a literary effort, spiced with crime and detection. J. C, Masterman is an Oxford Don (Christ Church) in Modern History. His latest has the unusual virtue of nice literary ability allied to the good crime writer’s sense of character and situation. Good stuff. Richard Keverne runs to 309 pages in his fourth contribution to the series, People were used to the moods of lonely Captain Bayne, but this time the very earth seemed to swallow him up. Gladys Mitchell has discovered something after the style of a feminine Father Brown. Her detective is an old lady, wise in psychology, calling everyone "My Dear Child," and searching for the vileness which could make a very undeserving corpse such a good beginning for a mystery.