25 JANUARY 1957, page 23

The Loner. By Fan Nichols. (boardman, 10s. 6d.) Typically...

typically sentimental, quite compulsive American thriller of the schizoid who cannot help but kill. You can sec what's coming, yet it's still exciting when it comes, like the......

It's A Crime

The Cold Dark Night. By Sarah Gainham. (Arthur Barker, 12s. 6d.) That admirable first novel, Time Right Deadly, which was about occupied Vienna, is here followed by an equally......

Postmark Murder. By M. G. Eberhart. (collins, 10s. 6d.)...

middle-class Chicago setting; solemn, rather sentimentalised small girl as central figure. Miss Eberhart is too well- mannered to bespatter her readers with blood, but too old a......

The Case Of The Fiery Fingers. By Erle Stanley Gardner.

(Heinemann, 12s. 6d.) Paul Drake is as highly ingenious and as tireless as ever in his detection, and Perry Mason as infuriating to the New York Police Department and District......

Books On India

The Story of the Integration of the Indian States. (Chatto and Windus, 21s.) Industrial Enterprise in India. By Nabagopal Das. (Longmans, 18s.) THESE three books deal with the......

Death By Proxy. By E. 13. Ronald. (boardman, 10s. 6d.)

Murder mystery set in London and peopled by Londoners, but retailed in near- American idiom, so that shamuses ride in elevators, at five minutes of eight, after a bourbon or,......

Off With His Head. By Ngaio Marsh. (collins, 12s. 6d.)

The talented and ever-readable Miss Marsh makes effective, if rather condescending, fun of comic Teutonic amateurs of folk-dancing and fertility rites, and the mummerset crew......

Best American Detective Stories Of 1955. Edited By David C.

Cooke. (Boardman, I ls. 6d.) A dozen workmanlike magazine stories, each blurbed into being a hit too big for its boots, but all readable, and one or two admirably crisp and......

Okey Dope

The Elegant Oakey. By Crosswell Bowen. (O.U.P., 30s.) ft • probably shows something or other, but the only two Mayors of London whose names I can automatically recall are Dick......

Three Strangers. By George Joseph. (board- Man, 10s. 6d.)...

tough, neat little suspense story of three kidnappers hiding with their couple of victims—child and nurse—in remote ham- burger joint. Familiar situation that is always exciting......

Moment For Murder. By Alfred Eichler. (hammond And...

6d.) Rather a lot of murders in the glossy, neurotic world inhabited by New York's thirty-thousand-dollars- a-year advertising executives. Background more skilfully done than......

Ransom Of The Angel. By David Dodge. (michael Joseph, 12s.

6d.) Rich playboy's yacht is pirated out of the harbour of Monaco, which I suppose is where good Americans go to when they die, these days. David Dodge has an eye, and a pen,......

Dust And The Curious Boy. By Peter Graaf. (michael Joseph,

12s. 6d.) Here, on the other hand, the contrast is deliberate, and well done, between the brash American private dick and the home-brewed British bobby, in a search after a......