13 DECEMBER 1957, Page 29

Shadow of a Lady. By Holly Roth. (Hamish Hamilton, 12s.

6d.) A red-haired young woman disappears in France; a red-haired young woman's corpse turns up in a trunk in Norfolk; and a lively young American woman's priggish English lover is tried for her murder. The style is so winning and the plotting so deft that although coincidence jumps in at every chapter, disbelief disappears at every paragraph.