CRIMES FOR THE HOLIDAYS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 804, 17 December 1954, Page 13

CRIMES FOR THE HOLIDAYS

MURDER AT MIDYEARS, by Marion Mainwaring; Victor Gollancz, English price 10/6. THE WIFE OF RONALD SHELDON, by Patrick Quentin; Victor Gollancz, English price 10/6. HEAR NO EVIL, by Stephen Ransome; Victor Gollancz, English price 96. CRIME, GENTLEMEN, PLEASE, by Delano Ames; Hodder and Stoughton, English price 10/6. LADIES’ BANE, by Patricia Wentworth; Hodder and Stoughton, English price 10/6. THE CAT AND FIDDLE MURDERS, by E. B. -Ronald; Victor Gollancz, English price 10/6. "HERE is much to be said for placing a murder in a University institution. Like an English country house, the place provides ample manoeuvring room; the freshness of youth swirls round oddities on the staff; and you can drape your mystery with learning. For these and other reasons I found Marion Mainwaring’s Murder at Midyears very agreeable. This new writer chooses for scene an American college for women, and for victim an overbearing professor of English whom no one mourns. The plot is exciting; there are some likeable people to balance the crankiness and crime; the study of English is skilfully woven into the narrative; and the writing has colour and wit. Marion Mainwaring is a welcome recruit. Patrick Quentin’s The Wife of Ronald Sheldon is perhaps a little disappointing after Fatal Woman, but it has exceptional quality. There are two megalo-maniacs-a rich American publisher, employer and friend of the narratorand an English author of coterie appeal who is brought over, with .a_ slave family to write for the firm. From this a strong plot of love and crime develops. I cannot credit the blindness of the narrator in not seeing through his boss long before, but this-sort of thing is not uncommon in detective stories. Hear No Evil, by the now practised Stephen Ransome, is the most gripping (continued on next page)

BOOKS

(continued from previous page) of this lot. A successful writer for television rings his home, listens in to what appears to be a murder, concludes that he has got the wrong number, and sets an investigation going, with most startling results for himself. A well-written story, not easily put down. All the above are American. In Crime, Gentlemen, Please, Delano Ames shows us that entertaining couple Jane and Dagobert Brown sleuthing in London, Their last stop had been Spain, and I agree with the English reviewer who finds them slightly less compelling by the banks of the softly-running Thames. However, in their unpredictability and unconventionality, they run true to form. Patricia Wentworth’s latest opens extraordinarily well; with a girl lost in a London fog, sinister words overheard, and rescue by a personable young man, but the rest hardly comes up to this promise. Patricia is inventive enough to be able to dispense with so old a device as a curse on a house, such as the one that gives the title to Ladies’ Bane. However, here is Maud Silver ‘again, always worth the money and the time. "Did you take a course in vulgarity, or does it come naturally to you?" asks a woman of the private-detective-narra-tor in The Cat and Fiddle Murders, f was inclined to murmur: "Both." This

brash bounder, with his rudeness and eye for female curves, is intolerable, and interest in the crime scene, a combined night club and art gallery on top of a London hotel, is lost in a maze of locked doors, lifts, rooms and motives.

A.

M.