5 APRIL 1957, Page 28

Wait for a Corpse. By Max Murray. (Michael Joseph, 12s.

6d.) The last crime story from the late Max Murray's pen, alas, (there is a straight novel still to come) is a pretty slight affair set in an English village, but a heroine who looks-oh, dear-like a pixie' is more than made up for by a silver-fox farmer who has the nice idea of breeding a fox that can run much faster than horse or hound, and that goes home after being hunted. A little more of this sort of invention would have enlivened a rather ordinary murder puzzle solved by the tritest of all methods: the deceased's diary produced in the last chapter.

CHRISTOPHER PYM