2 SEPTEMBER 1960, Page 23

Ghost in the Making. By Nigel Fitzgerald. (Collins, 10s. 6d.)

Murder is committed in the course of a bibulous, amorous Irish country- house party. Nigel Fitzgerald is very good at drawing-room comedy, not so good at methods of and motives for murder, and the interspersed Paragraphs of italicised streams-of-conscious- Whocribbed from those pretentiouS Americans have psychological ideas above their thriller-writing station, are a hideous mistake for a writer as good as he is.