16 NOVEMBER 1956, Page 23

Den - ril DROPS TILE PILOT. By George Bellairs. (Gifford, 10s. 6d.)

The victim is a ferry-pilot in the North-West, as it might be Fleet- wood, and the characters are the pretty ordinary small business- men and publicans' wives of provincial England, along ,with a Patient, and probable, police inspector. Life very much as it is

lived; English very much as she is spoke—which induces the comforting belief that these are crimes very much as they are solved.