24 JULY 1959, Page 30

It's a Crime

Shadow of Guilt. By Patrick Quentin. (Gollancz, I2s. 6d.) No novel could be as good as its Gollancz blurb, but this neat string of red herrings—one suspect after another proving not to have murdered the attractive Canadian con man who is cutting a swathe through the smart and sexy New Yorkers—is an ingenious and readable piece of mystification, even if it isn't 'a quite wonderful piece of detection on the classical model' (for the clues aren't all on offer to the reader), and even if it doesn't finally establish Patrick Quentin as 'the greatest living master of the mystery novel in the English-speaking world'.