19 OCTOBER 1956, Page 26

DEAD FOR A DUCAT. By Leo Bruce. (Peter Davies, 12s.

6d.) This stylish and amusing writer handicaps himself from the start by having as his Holmes and Watson a rich, Bentley-driving school- master and an odiously precocious fifth-former, both with names- Carolus and Priggley—as unlikely as the rest of the cast : Jason, Sir Ajax, and the Reverend Selwyn Fleece. Only the school porter —a Muggeridge—rings true. Three murders, incidentally, which is also a little over the odds.