16 AUGUST 1957, Page 23

Gideon's Night. By J. J. Marric. (Hodder and Stoughton, 12s.

6d.) Third in a series of slightly sentimentalised semi-documentaries of the muddle of mystery that comes in hour by hour to Scotland Yard, and how the skilled yet simple- hearted policemen sort it out. Pleasingly readable, if not quite as confidingly factual in manner as its predecessors.