14 APRIL 1961, Page 27

Murder is Incidental. By Douglas Rutherford. (Collins, 10s. 6d.) Peaceful,

inaccessible North Italian fishing village—as it might be one of the Cinque Terre—is torn out of its slumber. when rich man turns up, proposing to buy whole town (for sake of mineral deposits underneath it) and resettle its people in suburb of Milan. There is murder and a miracle, and not all the incidents are completely plausible, but the scene is en- gagingly sketched in by an author with con- siderable narrative and descriptive gifts, however perfunctory his plotting.