6 NOVEMBER 1959, Page 29

Man in the Dark. By Wilfred Cook. (Cresset Press, I6s.)

Commercial traveller strangles mis- tress's husband in drab Midland town and then, by forgery and good luck, steps not only into victim's bed but also into his bank account. Cuckolded in his turn, he comes to confession and sentence—a curiously matter-of-fact and feasible tale: a little seedy, a little sad, a little more human than most crime fiction, just as the Sunday news- papers are, slices of a sort of life.