25 JANUARY 1957, Page 23

Off With His Head. By Ngaio Marsh. (Collins, 12s. 6d.)

The talented and ever-readable Miss Marsh makes effective, if rather condescending, fun of comic Teutonic amateurs of folk-dancing and fertility rites, and the mummerset crew that obliges her with what somebody correctly calls 'ye olde goings-on.' But there's a Scots gardener as well, all too pawkily taken seriously, as is the nonagenarian Dame—that self-willed old body who is so frequent and so tedious a figure in English country-house murder cases. Well-bred Mr. Alleyn finds out who stabbed the patriarch with one of the dancers' swords, and left him dead behind the dolmen. Dear me, how folksy!