16 JANUARY 1959, Page 24

The House Above the River. By Josephine Bell. (Hodder and

Stoughton, 12s. 6d.) Learned about sailing, and evocative about the Brittany coast. Mrs. Bell writes with a sedate charm, and has woven a neat little story—of a man appealed to by a former lover, now in danger—but she leans too heavily on the arm of coincidence: so careful a writer ought to be a more punctilious plotter.