24 AUGUST 1956, Page 19

THE MISSING FORMULA. By Jacques Decrest. (Hammond and Hammond, 9s.

6d.) It may merely be translation from the French (very good, incidentally, by the talented Delano Ames) that gives a whiff of Simenon to this quite simple tale of Monsieur Gilles of the SOrete, plodding after the stolen papers from the cafés of Paris to those of Vienna. The superintendent is implacable and imperturbable, in the true Maigret manner, and the plot slim but taut, like a steel spring.