12 JULY 1957, Page 34

To This Favour. By Susan Gilruth. (Hodder and Stoughton, 12s.

6d.) Miss Gilruth has a pleas- ingly light hand with shop-worn puppets—the bluff country gentleman and his rich and pretty wife who falls for a writin' feller—and with her battle-weary plot, too, of the switched cup of coffee after dinner in the Cotswold manor-house, which does what the falling rock in the quarry had failed to do. All as freshly recounted as though it had never been thought of before.

CHRISTOPHER PYM