10 FEBRUARY 1956, Page 24

DARLING CLEMENTINE. By Dorothy Eden. (Macdonald, 9s. 6d.) Cosy Kensington

melodrama, with a tearful and bedridden heroine who worries about her 'tainted blood' inherited from a pirate ancestor, hears ghostly voices in the middle of the night, and suspects Prissie, the children's nurse, of maliciously frighten- ing her small son. Cloyingly written, in the ageless manner of the shiny women's magazines, but not without a certain elementary emotional tension.