16 NOVEMBER 1956, Page 24

THE CHINA ROUNDABOUT. By Josephine Bell. (Hodder and Stoughton, 12s..6d.)

Maharajah's gift—a china roundabout—leads to various Hampstead murders solved, eventually, by those essentially nice characters, Dr. Wintringham and Inspector Mitchell. Mrs. Bell always writes competently, and sometimes beautifully; pity that her plot should be quite so old-fashionedly improbable, and that she should make it so patent that such of her own creations as aren't English, upper-middle-class, Gentile and chaste are 'horrors,' curious' or 'abnormal.'