29 JULY 1960, Page 24

A Touch of Drama. By Guy Cullingford. (Hammond, 12s. 6d.)

Neither so terse nor so telling as the Symons novel, this is still well above the recent English average. A successful and con- ceited playwright is suspected of the murder of his wife, who has disappeared : a visit to the town of his dingy provincial boyhood involves a family he has left behind on his way to a sort of a top. Provincial life and people, rather smart- alec narrator-hero and plodding policeman, all very well done by a most persuasive novelist.