29 JUNE 1956, page 23

Ellery Queen's Awards. Edited By Ellery Queen. (collins,...

Outstanding among the American contributions that make up the majority of these seventeen, generally pretty good, short stories are the James Ullman piece of detection through......

Puritans And Prudes

1r is generally agreed, declares Miss Muriel Jaeger, that, between 1787 and 1837, the sweetness and light of the Age of Reason passed into the sombre earnestness of the......

Sweet Poison. By Mary Fitt. (macdonald, 10s. 6d.) A Man

who lives in the past is murdered in the present, but the ingenuity of the plot is as nothing to that of the word-making : 'susurring' is presumably the present participle of......

Death And The Gentle Bull. By Fran6es And Ridhard Lock-

ridge. (Hinchinson, 10s. 6d.) Urbane, literate, New York cop clears prize-winning bull of framed killing charge. Very neatly, quietly, done; and by genuine deduCtion, based on......

The Case Of The One-eyed Witness. By Erle Stanley Gardner.

(Heinemann, 12s. 6d.) In a foreword, dedicating his book to a lecturer in forensic medicine he once sat under, Mr. Gardner reveals how 'I have been brought to a realisation that......