6 OCTOBER 1961, Page 29

The Worm of Death. By Nicholas Blake. (Collins, 12s. 6d.)

Everybody knows that Nicholas Blake is Cecil Day Lewis, and so every= body knows that Mr. Blake can write. But what Mr. Lewis doesn't bother about in Mr. Blake's crime novels is even the most primitive sort of plausibility—this one begins and ends with the diary kept by the murderee, explaining how he knows that he is going to be murdered and by whom. Nobody could believe this nonsense of Mr. Blake's, not even Mr. Lewis, and I hope that Mr. Lewis doesn't despise his genre and his cash customers as Mr. Blake seems to despise his.