19 OCTOBER 1956, Page 26

MURDER OF OLYMPIA. By Margot Neville. (Bles, Ils. 6d.) Mel-

bourne prinking itself for the 1956 Games is the background to this murder mystery, but the Olympia of the title refers not to the stadium but to the Manet nude whom the luscious victim is said to have resembled. Margot Neville is the most urbane of Australian crime-story writers, and the talk, the tippling and the coffee-bar 'cultural' yearnings of well-to-do city Australians are crisply and sometimes frighteningly conveyed.