ENTER MURDERERS, SOFTLY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 886, 27 July 1956, Page 13

ENTER MURDERERS, SOFTLY

THE PATON STREET CASE, by John Bingham; Victor Gollancz, ip. Saanee price 10/6. TRIPLE QUEST, by . R. Punshon; Victor Gollancz, English price 10/6, THE SILENT POOL, by Patricia Wentworth; Hedder and Stou hton, English price 10/6. THE LONG NIGHT, _ by Seldon Truss; Hodder and Stou ae "En th price 10/6. DEAD INDEE by ‘ Hodgkin: Vietor Gollancz, a price 0/8 V2 EXPERT, by A. J, Evans; Hodder and Stoughton ,English price 10/6. HIDE THE BARON, b nthony Morton; Hodder and Stoughton, nglish price 10/6. MAKEUP FOR THE TOFF, ‘by John Creasey; Praia’ and Stoughton, English price 9/6. OPS" this time is John Bingham’s story of a murder in London. Here are well-woven complexity, suspense, vivid writing, and some exceptionally good character-drawing. Two Scotland Yard men, one Welsh and imaginative and the other English and matter-of-fact, are skilfully contrasted. And never have I read a more affecting account of Nazi cruelty against the Jews than the experience of the Jewish refugee who, with his wife and family, is involved in this crime coil. It is no reproach on the

author to say that whereas his murders are contrived, his Jews’ sufferings are based on historical reality, "Grow old along with me, the best is yet to be." I wonder if E, R. Punshon remembered his Browning as he wrote Triple Quest, for this is his forty-eighth detective story, and so far as I ‘have read them, about the best, A vain and virulent art critic cisappears just before he is to give a lecture at a big London art gallery, with whose director he is at odds. Bobby Owen of the Yard handles a very complicated skein of forgery of old masters and other misdeeds. In The Silent Poo] Patricia Wentworth is a little below her usual good self. Perhaps it is that the plot of a

rich old woman and expectant relatives has been used so often, However, Patricia can always be relied on for excitement and variety, and Maud Silver knits, and unravels, as impressively as ever. Even for this class of book there is an exceptional crop of nasty people in Seldon Truss’s The Long Night, including an unregistered nursing home run by a foreigner, a bunch of adolescent gangsters, and an ageing and declining actor of outrageous egotism. The construction is skilful, and the nastiness is largely redeemed by the two young people who fall in love. Dead Indeed is a tale of murder in the offices of New York publishers of (continued on next page)

KS (continued from previous page) children’s books. M. R. Hodgkin writes cleverly, but I found the mixture of literary chatter, personal and house | Ttivalry and crime, rather fatiguing. Some readers may ask themselves again whether it is a good thing to see behind the scene of letters. Especially one may wonder what children would think if they saw these caterers in action. Who killed the man in the moving train without leaving a trace on the spot, is the question posed in A. J. Evans’s The V2 Expert. The roots of this-English village mystery go back to treason and prison camps in the First War, and the action brings in present- | day Germany. A German top scientist in the district is strangely trusted by the British Government. An __international story of some merit. "The Baron," a reformed Robin Hood

gether, and both are rather more welcome than usual. I prefer’ "The Baron" personally, partly because he is happily married, whersas "The Toff" moves from one _ brief arm’s-length allurement to another. There are the usual rapid-fire adventures, including those batterings from which the heroes recover so quickly. "The Toff’s" adventures break new ground in being centred on. the wholesale manufacture of cosmetics. I positively waded through

make-up.

A.

M.