A COUPLE OF CORPSES
THE MASINGLEE MURDERS. By Maurice B. Dix. Robert Hale Ltd. NE of the characteristic devices of the detective novelist, the Big Brainthe Sherlock Holmes, Lord Peter Wimsey, or Inspector Alleyn-who is so irritatingly clairvoyant and right and orders all things to fit a neat pattern, is to be found in this novel. Montgomery Wilberforce, a journalist of Chestertonian or even Johnsonian bulk and rudeness, had his talents more keenly exercised than ever, as his son’s friend, a Canadian sergeant, is in the dock for double murder. The presence of Canadian troops in wartime England allows the astute author to vary the usual ingredients. He is prudent to leave us what is not so much a problem of detection as_a problem of legal probability to solve: can the defence sufficiently discredit the Crown’s evidence to acquit the innocent but unattractive hero? But in spite of quite a high degree of verisimilitude, you'd be surprised at some of the goings on in a British criminal court, as stage-managed by Mr. Dix.
David
Hall
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 435, 24 October 1947, Page 15
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175A COUPLE OF CORPSES New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 435, 24 October 1947, Page 15
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