INVESTIGATIONS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 729, 3 July 1953, Page 13

INVESTIGATIONS

THE BRUTE, by Guy des Cars, translated from the French by Michael. Luke; Allan Wingate. English price, 9/6. THROUGH | THE WALL, by Patricia Wentworth; Hod- | der and Stoughton. English, price, 10/6. | LEAVE MURDER TO ME, by Richard Powell;~ Hodder and Stoughton. English price, 7/3. BODY IN THE BECK, by Jo-. anna Cannan; Victor Gollancz. English price, 9/6. THE NEW SHOE, by Arthur | Upfield; Heinemann. English price, 10/6. THE- CASE OF THE FAN-DANCER’S HORSE, by Erle Stanley. Gardner; Heine- | mann. Australian price, 12/-. "| HE murder tale from France about a blind-deaf-mute, whose case looks so hopeless that it is left to a middleaged failure of an advocate to take it up, is one of the most original detection stories I have ever read. Though Jacques Vauthier ("The Brute’) can neither see nor hear, he is a university graduate and has written a book. He confesses to the crime and will not help the defence, His counsel, a man unspoiled by circumstance, probes into his client’s origin, education, and marriage, and all the other complications of the case, till he reaches the truth, which he reveals (continued on next page) 4

BOOKS (continued from previous page)

in court with shattering effect. The story is well told and the translation is smooth, And the technique of educating one so terribly handicapped will be a revelation to most readers. ‘Patricia Wentworth is at her best in Through the Wall, and her best is good. Miss Silver knits her way through a tangle of character and circumstance, and helps to make two exceptionally attractives lovers happy. Body in the Beck is notable for, on the one hand, excellent pictures of landscape and life in the fell country of Cumberland, and on the other, a dreadful bounder of a policeman-soft-bodied, stupid, cliché-ridden, invertedly snobbish and vulgar. How this twerp ever got into the force is a puzzle, and that he rose anywhere near DetectiveInspector is incredible. However, there are compensations in the Cumberland scene and characters, and in the brotherhood of climbing. By moving his European-aboriginal detective Napoleon Bonaparte about Australia, Arthur Upfield teaches us quite a lot of geography, The scene of The New Shoe is a lonely lighthouse -on the Victorian coast. As a record of detection the story is weaker than the frae-epef I have read, but the life of this out-of the-way country district is well portrayed. The hero of Leave Murder to Me : "one wonder afresh whether American’ ‘young men in real life are as tough-mannered as they are so often in fiction. True, Johnny Edwards had had 'a bad time in the war. In investigating in Cuba and Florida the murder of the friend who saved his life. among the Japanese, he gets more shocks and perhaps these and the girl we leave him embracing will tame him. This is a fast, _quick-fire, action-packed tale of author/ity versus bad men. | In The Case of the Fan-Dancer’s | Horse, Erle Stanley Gardner, described by the publisher as "the most read writer of detective fiction in the world" | (he has written over 40 books), joins _Heinemann’s ‘list. This is a_ typical Perry Mason story, but not quite in that unageing investigator’s front rank. rrr re -- or or >

I, for one, am introduced to’ the art of fan-dancing, which is apparently a sort of strip-tease act. Truly. the motto of fictional murder might be "Ubique."

A.

M.