Death in Covert. By Colin Willock. (Heine- mann, 15s.) Mr.
Willock is uncommonly know- ledgeable and even more uncommonly readable about open-air pursuits, and this frolicsome piece about murder at a Home Counties shoot is peopled with sporting wrong 'uns as ofl-colour and as amusing to read about as Facey and Soapey and Lucy Glitters, to say nothing of the nauseating public-relations smoothies that Sur- tees never knew and would have delighted in. A brilliant piece of social comedy, as well as 'a good detective-story. Much the same can be said of The Man Who Loved Chocolates, by Denzil Batchelor (Heinemann, 15s.), except that the de- tection isn't up to much. Indeed, the murder of a tycoon by poisoned chocolate creams at a birthday party attended by everyone who had
reason to hate him, including illegitimate grand- daughter who works at chocolate factory, is a hackneyed and implausible sort of situation, but
this novel, too, is intensely readable because of roaring eccentrics with which it is filled: Mr.
Batchelor makes a sort of Hieronymus Bosch canvas out of a London crammed with such folk as a Communist collector of dirty books who lives in Albany, a lovely Lesbian, Miss Denti- frice 1910, and a gloomy police-inspector who mentally undresses his more personable suspects. Don't believe—and don't miss—a word of it.
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