24 JULY 1959, page 30

The House Of Silence. By H. Wood Jarvis. (muller, 15s.)

A clean-limbed Englishman among sinister 'Orientals' (by which the author means Levantines); and an English gentlewoman with candid blue eyes in the harem of an Egyptian husband......

Drawn-out Murder Story Distinguished By Its Zanzibar...

characters popping out on cue to buy cuttle fish or mangoes, and thus allowing the author to get in her descriptive bits. Nice, summery read, with some of the appeal of a good......

Death Watch By John And Ward Hawkins (eyre And Spottiswoode,

12s. 6d.). consists of two stories. In the first a woman knows that one of the policemen guarding her has been suborned to kill her. The question is which—and how to catch and......

Only Connect

I AM AN untidy man, and like all untidy men, I have fits and spasms of excessive tidiness. One of those recurring fits consists of a furious assault on my bookshelves, in a vain......

It's A Crime

Shadow of Guilt. By Patrick Quentin. (Gollancz, I2s. 6d.) No novel could be as good as its Gollancz blurb, but this neat string of red herrings—one suspect after another proving......

Letters From Paris

Selected Journalism. By Stendhal. Edited and Introduced by Geoffrey Strickland. (Calder, 30s.) IN France the study of a major writer has a way of turning into a minor industry.......

Crowded And Dangerous. By Anthony Lejeune. (macdonald,...

plot may be pretty unlikely, but the young and agreeable Londoners involved in it are such as you might meet at anyone's sherry party, and the blackjacking, blackmailing, and......