DUSTY DEATH

New Zealand Listener, Volume 22, Issue 548, 23 December 1949, Page 13

DUSTY DEATH

THE LITTLE SISTER, by Raymond Chand- ' Jer; Hamish Hamilton. English price, 8/6. THREE OF HEARTS, by James M. Cain: Robert Hale. English price, 10/6. THE KING AND THE CORPSE, by Max Murray; Michael Joseph. English price, 8/6. ‘TOUGHNESS is not quite everything in the thrillers of Raymond Chandler. Four or-five murders are committed before Philip Marlowe breaks through the intrigue which surrounds the rather dowdy young woman who brings him his latest case, and between the murders there is the usual amount of incidental violence and amorous dalliance. But Chandler also has an eye for social drabness beneath the bright Californian sunlight, and he reveals it with a dry and searching clarity. James M. Cain is less subtle than Chandler. He follfows the cult of violence more intently, and although he seems anxious to convince the reader that he, too, is looking for reality, the feeling remains that small-time gangsters, wantons of the frontier towns, and perverts in the Appalachian highlands reveal somewhat limited facets of the human situation. Max Murray has been welcomed as "an admirable newcomer to detective fiction." He seems a little insipid -after the Americans; and the smooth writing, although refreshing, does not leave an impression of impenetrable mystery. The King comes from a Danubian State where murder, it seems, is not to be taken too seriously; and the Corpse is all that remains of a character so unpleasant that the reader’s sympathies are entirely with the killer. But justice is served in the tidy ending.